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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181075">From the Ice Dragon's Shadow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusePlusProcrastination/pseuds/MusePlusProcrastination'>MusePlusProcrastination</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Game of Thrones (Video Game 2014)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bromance, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Post-canon from the game, Season 5 of the show retcon, Talia/Gared is more just a kid crush btw, The Long Night, War of the Five Kings, Women Being Awesome, lets be honest GOT's problems started from there at least, mix of book and show canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:56:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>34,750</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181075</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusePlusProcrastination/pseuds/MusePlusProcrastination</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ironrath burns; House Forrester is scattered. Their Whitehill enemies, as Bolton bannermen, are free to enforce their rule across the wolfswood.  Asher has inherited a situation of chaos which he must work to undo while caught between conflicting loyalties and a need for justice. Mira, trapped in King's Landing, must bend the rules of the game of thrones if she is to survive her captors. Amid the bloodshed, Beskha seeks home in a strange land that is in increasing need of time to heal. And deep in the heart of winter, where Gared has found the long-hidden North Grove, an even greater danger is stirring that threatens to cast everyone on all sides into a long darkness.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Asher Forrester/Gwyn Whitehill, Talia Forrester/Gared Tuttle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Talia I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Probably like 5 years or something too late but my ideas wouldn’t leave me alone until I said fuck it and wrote them out. This chapter takes place immediately where Episode 6 of the Telltale Game, 'The Ice Dragon', leaves off. </p><p>Warning for vivid descriptions/recollections of blood, death, and violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ice crunched under Talia’s feet as she dismounted, keeping two hands braced on Asher’s shoulders to hold him in the saddle. Stronger arms looped around hers, then Duncan was carrying her brother himself. The stick he had used to cover their horse’s tracks he tossed into a black shock of briars at the clearing’s edge. With the snow falling at this pace, they no longer had need of it.</p><p>Soon the hour of the wolf would be upon them. The darkest part of the night, bringing the fiercest part of the cold. Already the sky was so black, she had to wince to trace the outlines of ironwood branches scratching at its starless belly. Clouds had swallowed those stars, the moon with them. No light but the dim yellow pulse of their lantern.</p><p>Under Asher’s weight, Duncan began to strain. Sweat rose to his brow, glimmering in the lantern’s sickly halo.</p><p>“Quickly, quickly… get inside… open the door…” he hissed through clenched teeth.</p><p>He was talking to Gwyn. She rushed ahead, skirts raised, one arm crooked around a leather bag. Dirt and frost gave way to mud in the churned farm field. Once, that soil had nurtured the Tuttle pigs and crops, no small provider of the food that made its way to the Forresters’ table. Now all that remained was the sprawled corpse of a wooden cart and an empty trough. All the pigs slaughtered. The house itself looked smaller, more mournful than she remembered, its thatched roof slouching over rough stone walls bearded with untamed grass.</p><p>This was what poor Gared had come home to. His father and sister dead before he could greet them.</p><p>He looked so desolate that day, features torn and shoulders falling, Gared who was always so brave and strong. She had ached for him. Only later did she learn it was the last time they would see each other, but for the farewell she snatched at Ironrath’s gate.</p><p>All that Talia wanted to tell him that day lodged heavy in her throat as she set her lantern down. Led the horse to one of the remaining firm fence posts.</p><p>The animal, one of Ironrath’s rounseys for use of its household, seemed to know Tuttle farm as well, tossing its mane in dismay at the wreckage around. In mute agreement, Talia tethered it. Could not help glancing at Duncan as she did so. Was it more than just Asher’s weight making his face contort, more than exhaustion from the night’s trials wracking his breath? <em>He’s Gared’s uncle.</em> The Tuttles were his family, too. Had he forgotten what the Whitehills did? He was not assisting her and Asher of his own will even now. It had been Gwyn’s notion to find the Forresters' traitor amid the siege, and she bought his aid with a threat.</p><p>“My father knows you told Rodrik of the plan to ambush Asher and his army,” she told him after Talia brought her to his cell. “You were his only informant. No one else could have known. Now that he’s taken Ironrath, you're a dead man. Obey me now and I will ask him for your life. That might save you. Nothing else will.”</p><p>Talia had protested, but Gwyn saw Asher suffer a knife to his side in the fighting. For his sake, they needed a place to hide, recover, wait out the siege. Duncan’s farm offered that. After she and Gwyn tracked down Asher in the woods, he had shown them the way.</p><p>But they had found her brother in a far more grievous state than a single knife wound.</p><p>A whine slipped from Asher as Duncan squeezed them through the door. Fresh panic reeled through Talia at the sound, lost in white noise as blood roared in her ears.</p><p>“Get his clothes off while I start a fire." Duncan laid Asher out across a table. Talia could only dumbly obey. Her brother's fall from the horse that delivered him from Ironrath must have been bad, because his clothes were heavy and logged with mud. Mud and blood. She had to pry them off. Every slight tug of her hands punched a grunt of pain from him. Yet her words, when she managed any, elicited no response.</p><p>The fire came to life with a shuddered crackle and threw an orange wash of light over them. Making the work easier.</p><p>A relieved sigh rose in her throat as she finally bared his chest, but it caught there at the sight.</p><p>“Oh, gods be good,” whispered Gwyn.</p><p>Just under the knife cut above his hip was a sword puncture so deep it was sobbing out blood still. Burns and bruises bloomed angrily across his stomach in a crimson-purple comet.</p><p>“Maester Ortengryn,” Talia all but wailed. They had looked for him but found only his body with the throat opened chin to collarbone, matting his beard in blood. <em>We could not save him and now no one can save Asher –</em>
</p><p>The name snapped Gwyn back to alertness. “I stole these…” She shrugged off her bag. Herb bundles and bandages from Ortengryn’s stores tumbled out. “Can we, oh Seven, can we do something with…”</p><p>“Yes.” Duncan pulled a wineskin from his belt and clawed off the cork, shoving it into Gwyn’s hands. “Talia, over there by the cupboards you’ll find some bowls and a cloth. Before anything else, we need to clean him up.”</p><p>She fetched them. As Duncan started cleaning Asher – Talia noted with relief that no small part of the blood came off, evidently not her brother’s own – Gwyn poured the wineskin's contents into the spare bowl. Her brow furrowed as she watched the gold-brown liquid sloshing.</p><p>“Moonshine. A good deal of trouble gone to for a feast arranged as a trap.”</p><p>Talia froze.</p><p><em>Did Asher tell her?</em> Unthinkable, that he could be so stupid. But then she never imagined him calling his own plan off, either. “N-no one knew my lady mother would lash out like that.”</p><p>“I don't doubt. Though that was all it took for the bloodshed to start.” Her eyes flew back to Asher’s wounds, and her pale, sharp-cut features splintered. “Tuttle, are you sure –?”</p><p>“Yes,” he huffed. “I know what I’m doing. And I fancy moonshine necessary to get through any feast longer than five minutes with your father as the honoured guest. Be glad plenty of it was available back there; it might save Asher’s life. Give me the bowl.”</p><p>Talia slid it to him. He soaked the cloth. At the first dabs to Asher’s wounds, her brother came screaming back to life, gnashing his teeth in frantic agony.</p><p>“Oh, good, means it’s working,” said Duncan mildly. </p><p>“Just see that you are, as well.” Gwyn dived back into the bag. “Talia – gods – try to calm him.”</p><p>“I.” Her hands felt clumsy, useless with fear. Suddenly the hewn walls around her blurred into Ironrath’s smooth-cut stone, the beams ironwood, the firelight a row of candles. Ramsay slammed his dagger into Ethan’s neck. Her twin crumpled to the floor. Ribbons of blood down his lips, chin, throat. His eyes glazing over while she and Mother clutched him, howled, little Ryon wrested away before anyone could move - </p><p>She forced herself back to the present as she fumbled for her brother’s hand. Squeezed it. “Asher, it’s me. Your sister Talia. I’m here. I’m here with you.”</p><p>Gwyn drew a draught of white, silky-looking liquid from the bag. Milk of the poppy.</p><p>“Asher. Asher, you must take this. For the pain.”</p><p>His dulled green gaze had been skittering around, failing to find focus, but it did land on the little vial in her fingers before she pressed it to his chapped mouth. Perhaps it was a familiar enough sight to break through the fog of pain. <em>Maybe her voice in the darkness means more to him than yours.</em> </p><p>Soon Asher slipped back into unconsciousness. Duncan continued swabbing, cleaning, rubbing, more briskly with Asher lying still again. When he was done, he started making salves of Ortengryn's herbs and nettles.</p><p>“His wounds must be stitched up,” said Gwyn.</p><p>“Forgive me, my lady, but being the son of pig farmers, I had to learn how to sort out mine own injuries or illnesses growing up myself. Been doing things like this for more of my life than I spent as Gregor’s castellan. Taught my nephew the way of it, too. Smallfolk like us don’t get a maester to tend to their every little cut and bruise.”</p><p>“I'm well aware. I’ve seen enough soldiers die because they were not saved when the chance was there.”</p><p>“Are soldiers what Whitehills call conscript fodder and pillaging savages?”</p><p> “I can thread a needle through scars. Let me do so.” There was black ice in her voice now.</p><p>He did not answer, but did not impede her either as she started stitching. Her hands were sure enough to tell of her experience, Talia had to admit. Once Asher’s wounds were closed, Duncan smeared his poultices on each before bandaging them.</p><p>“You said that treating him with that moonshine could save him,” Talia said when he was done, steepling her hands and straightening her back to sound stronger, older than four and ten. “Can it? Will he live?”</p><p>“I’m still no maester, Talia. Though, if he does recover… I doubt he’ll be fighting again.”</p><p>“For a long time?”</p><p>“Possibly ever.”</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Turned away from the dimming hearth fire – Duncan reached for a poker lying slack against the wall to stoke it – Gwyn’s expression was unreadable in the dark. “Then we’d best see that he won’t need to," she said. "An end to the fighting was all I wanted since it began. I told Asher as much.”</p><p>Somehow, Talia did not believe the same sentiment would have swayed her brother. He was always the fiercest Forrester, even before his exile. <em>Far as I’m concerned, this war has just gotten started</em>, he snarled in her memory, to the mounting cheers of the smallfolk. And no one wanted Ludd dead more.</p><p>“Gwyn.”</p><p>
  <em>If not with the peace you wanted, how? How in the name of the gods did you convince him?</em>
</p><p>“Yes, Talia?”</p><p>She seemed so arrogantly calm against the squall of Talia’s own emotions, rising like a ball of ice shards in her throat. Did she even want to know how Gwyn did it? <em>What if it’s all just because he still desires her –</em></p><p>“How did you know we were laying a trap?” she landed on.</p><p>“You just confirmed it. All I had before were my suspicions, but they were strong. The way I saw Asher and your mother acting before she lunged for my father made me almost certain.”</p><p>The fire glimmered to life again under Duncan’s poker. Chasing some of the cold away. Gwyn pinched the bridge of her nose and stood. “To be clear, I don’t blame him, nor you, nor even your lady mother for that matter. My father put you all in a terrible position, and I saw that Asher was trying to undo whatever plans were in place – as he promised me. Now what’s important is that both of you are kept safe.”</p><p>“Kept safe here at my farm, you mean?” The challenge was clear in Duncan’s voice.</p><p>“Need I explain that Asher is not going anywhere like this? Or have you elected to forget your knowledge of how men heal from before you were made a castellan?”</p><p>
  <em>No, he elected to forget everything that came after he was made our castellan.</em>
</p><p>“It's not a permanent solution!”</p><p>“Did you always hate us, Duncan?” blurted Talia. “Was there nothing left in it for you after Father was slain? We trusted you! You were like family! I recommended you to Ethan as Sentinel, even over Royland! But you turned traitor, and you won’t help us now – not willingly.”</p><p>His eyes flickered uneasily between her and Gwyn. “I gave your lord brother my reasons in the hall.”</p><p>“I did not hear them then and I do not care to now.”</p><p>“If… if you truly did suggest to Ethan that I should be Sentinel, then I am sorry –”</p><p>“As am I! More than you know. I have been ever since I found your last report.”</p><p>It felt important, here before the man’s own hearth as they had found him crouched before Father’s, that he knew it was her who turned him in to Rodrik.</p><p>Duncan drew a rattled breath and balled his fists. “I can arrange for people to come tend this place in my absence – something I meant to do after my brother’s death anyway – and I can see to it that they’ll provide for you while Asher heals. Let this be how I redeem myself for what happened. Let me save you.”</p><p>“You are returning to Ironrath, then? Back with your friends in the Whitehill garrison.”</p><p>“We both need to show our faces back there before dawn, Talia,” said Gwyn. “Some of my father’s men know this place – it’s far from a secret that Lord Gregor made a pig farmer his castellan. If Tuttle is discovered missing, as you and Asher will be, where is the first place you think they will look? He must present himself at Ironrath alive when the battle’s done, with me to vouch for him. Elsewise you will never be able to hide here long enough for Asher to heal.”</p><p>
  <em>She had it all worked out before we even left Ironrath.</em>
</p><p>“Not to worry, he won’t dream of setting my father’s men on you.” Then Gwyn faced him. “I don’t know how sincere your promises of helping Talia and Asher are, Tuttle, but it makes no matter because you will be delivering regardless. Their being here is your secret too now. If they are found on your land, it’s you my father will hurt first and worst.”</p><p>He glared at her. “I’ll need to keep faith with you, then?”</p><p>“Until such time as the danger passes.”</p><p>“And when will that be?” Talia hated how her voice cracked forming the question. Tears wet her cheeks. Her head hurt. She was so tired. “How do you know it’s ever going to stop?”</p><p>Gwyn moved closer and held out her hand. Her palm was an empty cradle, waiting.</p><p>The sight only made everything feel more wrong. Talia kept her own hands locked and her gaze on the floor. Visibly wincing, Gwyn pulled back.</p><p>“Gryff is dead,” she said finally. “Asher’s blade, my father’s doing; though he will not see it that way. He won't suffer Asher to live while he holds power, not anymore, but my younger brother’s death means that my elder ones must come home. Hopefully, when Torrhen returns to Highpoint… my father will step down. I see now that he should have done so long before. Great pain might have been avoided.”</p><p><em>Isn’t that the truth.</em> “And you believe that your brother Torrhen would stop the feud?”</p><p>“Winter is coming, as a glance outside will tell you,” jumped in Duncan wryly. “Whether he desires an end to the fighting or not, the winds of winter will force everything on both sides to a halt. I know. I’ve survived enough winters poor to know what they can do. Funny, how highborns forget.”</p><p>“Then it’s a matter of building a peace that will let Asher, Ryon, and myself go home to Ironrath before the winter hits us for true and we’re trapped.”</p><p>“But once it does, you will be safe,” agreed Gwyn.</p><p>Duncan sighed. “From here, it's the only plan we have. It’s the hour of the wolf, Talia.”</p><p>Ortengryn’s goods were packed away and left behind for Talia's use. Hooking his arms around Asher, Duncan pried his limp form off the table, carrying him to a rope bed. The only bed, with a straw mattress that was of small size for a family of three. Duncan carefully kicked it a few times before easing Asher down, evicting a small cluster of bugs.</p><p><em>We’re staying here,</em> thought Talia in a moment of startled recoil. No, she chastised herself, none of that. <em>We are lucky to be alive.</em></p><p>From her hip, Gwyn drew her dagger. She sliced through Asher’s ruined jerkin, lifted a piece of bloodied cloth. “I mean to leave a trail leading away from the farm,” she explained when she noticed Talia watching. “If any of my father’s hounds perchance survived, none will lead his men here.”</p><p>Talia's eyes went to her brother. Breathing more strongly and normally, but shivering still under the woollen blanket. The Asher who rode through Ironrath’s gates had been hale, strong, darkened and freckled after five years under the Essosi sun. Blood loss and the cold had drained the colour out. His skin more closely resembled murky snow now, but at least it was no longer as pale as death.</p><p>Gwyn’s fingers brushed against his cheek. Talia flinched. She had forgotten that she was there.</p><p>“How can you be so confident that our feud will end?”</p><p>“Your brother has a better chance of pulling through. I can do anything.”</p><p>“You still want to marry him.” It was not a question. “No, before you say anything – there is something I want you to do.”</p><p>“If it is in my power…”</p><p>“There is no if, it is. Rodrik talked of how involved you were in the negotiations. You’ve never had a problem winning over Ludd if it’s for something that suits you.”</p><p>She took advantage of Gwyn’s chastened silence to run the options through her head. Ryon, Royland, and so many others still at Ironrath. Elaena, though, was safe; Talia saw to her escape some time before the Whitehills’ arrival.</p><p>“Come with me,” Elaena had begged her. “The war is won by the Boltons’ terms. Rodrik is dead. House Forrester is lost. Even if Asher prevails, Ramsay will not accept it and…” Her hands gripped her reins so tightly that the garron Talia gave her from the stables began fussing and pawing. “I cannot lose another sibling to that monster, Talia!"</p><p>“No more than I can leave Mother, and she won’t abandon Asher, not again,” she had replied around the swelling knot in her throat. “Besides, if she or I suddenly leave, it will look suspect, and the Whitehills will never be persuaded inside. You, though… you just lost Rodrik. Betrothed or no, you proved how you felt about him when you came to Ironrath with Arthur. No one would find it passing odd if you left in your grief.” She hesitated, because there was no kind way to say it, but… “It’s the best thing you could do for us now.”</p><p>Elaena winced. “Going home to Rillwater Crossing is no longer an option for me. It must be my Riverlander cousins. It’s so far. I don’t fear the journey, but saying for certain when I could contact you again…”</p><p>Talia had to respond through tears. “You’ll be far from the Boltons, too. Safe. And – you could reach Mira. She's in King’s Landing with Lady Margaery, remember we told you?”</p><p>“I remember. We Glenmores have ties to House Tyrell ourselves.” Determination renewed, she nodded. “Alright. I’ll go, and when I get the chance, I’ll reach out to your sister. Perhaps together, we can beg the Tyrells do something about that Bolton <em> bastard</em> …”</p><p>“Our sister,” Talia corrected, squeezing her hand one last time. “I don’t care if you and Rodrik didn’t get the chance to marry for true. You’re one of us, Elaena! Iron from Ice!”</p><p>That had snatched a smile onto Elaena’s lips. “Iron from Ice.”</p><p>As for the lives she could bid Gwyn save now, Ryon’s, at least, could not be in too deep danger. Rodrik had said that Gwyn took it on herself to protect him at Highpoint anyway. Then there was Royland. Royland, their Sentinel, their guardian, her friend. Who taught her how to fight, who was loyal to the end. If Royland were still fighting now – as he no doubt was – he might be dead or on the way already. She had to swallow another sob at the thought.</p><p>There was no question about Mother’s fate. She had broken away from Talia before Gwyn reached them. Rushed into the fray crying Asher’s name. After freeing Duncan, they had looked for her, but found only her bloodied body lying supine in the yard.</p><p>The memory was a fresh beam of pain through Talia's heart, but she forced herself to resist letting it flood her just yet, hardening her eyes before raising them to meet Gwyn’s.</p><p>“Make sure my mother is given a respectful send-off. I don’t care that she started the battle tonight, or how many of your men’s lives are on her hands. She is Lady Forrester. My mother and Asher’s. You attended my father and Ethan’s funeral in Ryon’s place, you know where their ashes were scattered. Put hers with theirs.”</p><p>“That is no small ask, Talia…”</p><p>“Too great for someone who wants to be a Forrester?” she snapped. “If you did not already know through his spying…” Duncan flinched, “…She fought her hardest from the start to have Asher come home. If you love him as much as you profess, you owe her. Let her collect.”</p><p>“I'm already keeping it a secret that you and yours planned to break guestright.”</p><p>“Yes, because you’d have to, if you want to reveal that you kept us hidden later. There would be no way for you to justify that if your family knew. This is your secret now as well.”</p><p>“You realise that, for this to work, blame for tonight will have to be laid squarely on her shoulders.”</p><p>That thought did prick her. Mother had latched onto the idea eagerly, but it had not been her own. “As I said. You owe her. Are you going back on not blaming us now? Or can’t you sympathise with a woman who just lost her child?”</p><p>A moment passed. Gwyn set her jaw and nodded. “Understood. You have my word.”</p><p>“I’ll tell you if she does not, Talia,” said Duncan as he rose from a bedside trunk, laying out some clothes. </p><p>“If you want to <em>redeem</em> yourself…”</p><p>“In exchange,” he interrupted, “Let them have a moment alone. Will you come help me ready the horse?”</p><p>A reflexive protest rose and died in her throat. Something in Duncan’s eyes, brown as oak and just as hard, made her rise. Gwyn murmured her thanks, perhaps too relieved at the opportunity to question it, closing her hand around Asher’s limp fingers.</p><p>Both of them had their backs to her. Talia drew a scalpel from Ortengryn’s bag. She held it behind her back as she followed Duncan to the door.</p><p>Once they were outside, he turned to her with hands raised in a sort of surrender.</p><p>“You have reason to hate me, I know. It is a great deal I ask for you to hear me now. It's something I cannot say in front of her. She and Rodrik might have known each other when they were children - I even helped them meet in secret, I thought she might help end the bloodshed, but… well, a Whitehill is still a Whitehill. You’ve always been smart, Talia, you know you can’t trust her, don’t you?”</p><p>“Obviously. No more than I trust you.”</p><p>“Think of Gared, the love we bear him. We still share that between us.”</p><p>That blow cut too deep. “How dare you. You were the one who sent him to the Wall.”</p><p>“I had to, or…”</p><p>Royland’s voice drowned out his. <em>Find another advantage, surprise your opponent, do something unexpected…</em></p><p>Quick as a snake, she lunged the scalpel at his face. She stopped short but it was enough for him to startle. He fell back a step. Two. <em>Bring your opponent down to your level.</em> She focused on the back of his knees. Raised her foot. Aimed the kick –</p><p>Too slow. She stumbled on her dress. The material weighed down by the snow. His hand closed on her arm. No pressure beyond what was necessary to halt her, but it was enough of a reminder of how much more powerful he was. A man with strength honed from toiling in this very field since early boyhood. He was no trained fighter like Royland, but even a warrior would struggle against him disarmed. She cried out in frustration.</p><p>Their rounsey echoed the sound with an anxious squeal, pawing the ground and thrashing its tail.</p><p>Duncan went to calm the animal, muttering words of reassurance until it was comfortable with his untethering it. Talia shadowed his every step.</p><p>“I sent Gared to the Wall to protect House Forrester,” he said lowly.</p><p>“Oh yes, protecting us, I’m sure that was at the forefront of your mind when…”</p><p>“Because he killed two men-at-arms here, one from House Whitehill and the other House Bolton.”</p><p>For some moments, the only sound between them was the rustle of wind through the ironwood branches and the horse’s nickering.</p><p>“No, I didn’t think anyone would have told you. I will say – no one thought he was wrong to do it. Not Royland, not your lady mother, certainly not me. Those men had the blood of my brother and niece fresh on their swords. But Ludd was baying for his justice, of course.”</p><p>Talia watched Duncan’s fist whiten around the reins as he jerked his head towards the house.</p><p>“According to her, my being castellan was well-known in House Whitehill. If that is so… the whole thing was most like designed to provoke me, the assumed new power in Ironrath with a boy lord at the helm. The perfect excuse for them to go to Roose Bolton calling for our heads and, gods save us, Ramsay was the one who answered. But it was not for Gared’s safety alone that I sent him to the Wall. There is a secret. Your father only told Rodrik, me – and Gared, with his last breath. Even I do not know the full of it, and Gared had less still to go on, faith preserve him.”</p><p>This was too much. She stepped back. Behind her, the door rattled. “Secret – what…”</p><p>“From your father’s journal. Pages I ripped out and had on me when you and Rodrik confronted me.”</p><p>He seized her hand and closed a bundle of crinkled papers inside it before releasing her. The sound of boots crunching through snow yanked her attention to Gwyn coming through the door. Talia hid the papers behind her back. Where she had held the scalpel.</p><p>Gwyn paused when she noticed the weapon tossed onto the ground, a streak of mud behind it like a bleeding wound in the snowy earth. She met Talia’s gaze with an arched brow.</p><p>“A scar would make his disguise of Whitehill loyalist soldier more convincing,” she said innocently.</p><p> <em>Had I landed that blow… it would have looked exactly like the scar Mother gave Ludd.</em></p><p>When Gwyn frowned, Duncan rather belatedly echoed, “A scar’s not bad thinking of hers, milady.”</p><p>“Try not to tempt me any further, Tuttle. If we hurry now…”</p><p>Hurry they did, vanishing into the night while Talia stood behind, alone, watching snowfall fill the dips made by the horse’s hooves. She shivered, hugged herself tight. Stinging icy wetness clung to her skirts where she had stumbled, an artic bite against her ankles.</p><p>Asher had to be cold too. <em>I must tend to him.</em></p><p>Back inside, she restored the fire by feeding it the remnants of her brother’s ruined bloody jerkin. It sparked back up again with a burr. Resisting the urge to go to it and warm her numbed hands, Talia went through the clothes Duncan laid out.</p><p>All were dull greys, browns, tans. He had resided at Ironrath since becoming castellan; the post demanded and entitled him to better quality apparel, but that and everything else required for the role he had kept at the holdfast itself. These were his family's clothes. They had to be better than what most smallfolk owned, but it was still vastly different to what she was used to. Nearly everything was scratchy under her hand, roughspun, though there were some furs, too.</p><p>
  <em>Much warmer than what I have on now, at the least.</em>
</p><p>After getting her brother into a new jerkin with two fur cloaks thrown over the blanket for good measure, she traded her snow-sodden dress for dry breeches, boots, a loose tunic she found close to her size, and another couple of furs to swaddle her own chilled body in.</p><p>
  <em>These must have been Gared’s.</em>
</p><p>The thought that she was wearing his clothes – as close as could be to his cloak! – made her blush, a pleasant warmth humming through her quite different to the kind offered by the fire, but it passed quickly when Duncan’s words returned to her.</p><p>A Whitehill man and a Bolton man. Two lives for the two they took on this farm.</p><p>She imagined Gared at the Wall, clad in black with crow feathers sweeping down his shoulders, his chestnut brown hair smothered in snow as much as the yard outside was. His nose red, face wan, and teeth gritted against a far worse cold than the one she was weathering now.</p><p>A sword in his hand, wet with the blood that gave Ramsay Snow his excuse to kill Ethan.</p><p>Talia clutched her head and moaned into her palms. They had made the perfect scapegoat of Gared. Would peace with the Whitehills mean no chance of bringing him home? No justice for his poor family? For hers?</p><p>She was not sure she wanted peace at all if that had to be the price.</p><p>“What happened was not fair.”</p><p>The only response was the sound of the fire’s crackles and the building howl of the wind outside. Sighing, she slipped into bed beside her brother.</p><p>“I’ll tell you everything when you wake up, Asher,” she whispered. “How I helped Rodrik when he was injured from the Twins, just as I’ll help you, as much and as long as you need me. How Mira’s helped us in King’s Landing, with Lady Margaery. She gutted Ludd’s army, you’ll be so proud of her. And how it all started with Ethan…” she bit her lip, pressing closer, “how brave he was, how he defended me to the end like you always defended him – and how everything started. Gared is not to blame. The Whitehills are.”</p><p>Whether Asher could hear her or no, speaking the words on her chest made her feel a little stronger. As if the hearth fire was reaching into her, melting out the fear that had held her half-frozen while Duncan and Gwyn worked out their plans. <em>Iron from Ice.</em></p><p>But now she had to be the one caring for her brother, whatever those plans were. Perhaps in spite of them. That fear remained immovable, lodged in her gut like a last lingering cold shard.</p><p>“Whatever peace you decided you want to build with Gwyn, you must make it a just one. Promise.”</p><p>Talia continued lying there for what might have been a while, watching shadows ripple on the wooden beams above. Easing Asher out of her arms, she reached for the crinkled papers Duncan left her. Smoothed them out with her finger pads. <em>Father’s writing. Duncan did not lie.</em> What was this secret they shared, that only Rodrik was told of it?</p><p>But she had not yet snatched a wink of sleep and the pillow – harsh burlap stuffed with feathers and straw though it was – suddenly felt soft and yielding beneath her head. Soon enough her eyes grew heavy. The words on the page slurred together into black loops and streaks. Her head was numb. Tiredness took hold, offering oblivion, sweet refuge from the fear and stress that the days to come would bring.</p><p>Giving up, she feebly shuffled the papers aside before rolling back over. Only one phrase Father had used repeatedly stayed in her mind, chasing her into the blackness.</p><p>
  <em>The North Grove.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The North Grove.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The North Grove.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>On the traitor Duncan and Gwyn Whitehill reluctant tag-team: this is going from the “peace” ending but I also wanted to introduce Duncan into the plot and fanfic, happily, lets you have shit both ways.</p><p>Duncan can patch up wounds because Gared can with Cotter’s boo-boo if he also steals Ortengryn's stuff; it had to come from somewhere. The treatment itself was not medically accurate/realistic, but then the wounds themselves as sustained by Asher/Rodrik weren’t either. So fair game. No pun intended. It was actually a very unfair game and its conclusion persisted in bothering me during COVID lockdown.</p><p>The moonshine: I had to check but distilled liquor does exist in ASOIAF/GOT. It’s naturally more common in Essos, but smaller-scale, local, less sophisticated distilleries aren’t impossible for Westeros. I hope they’re not. The Forresters need something strong to drown their perpetual sorrows in.</p><p>Comments are loved, however long/short and whenever you have time for 'em. First upload so little clue what to expect.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mira I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for execution of a child, physical assault and abuse, entrapment, and an aborted attempt at suicide to escape a forced marriage.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>More than anything, Mira would have liked to throw Morgryn’s offer back in his smug face. To tear her hand from his, shred that expectant smile playing on the bearded worms of his lips, watch him choke on the fury of knowing that his gamble on her pride had failed.</p><p>But if the Red Keep had taught her anything, it was that everything she did had its consequences. Every prick to her reputation was a potential hammer-blow to her family.</p><p>For a fighting chance against Ludd, they needed to trade their ironwood widely, and the Crown was the ultimate prize partner. House Whitehill could not be allowed the privilege. But there would be no trade at all if a daughter of House Forrester were charged with treason for all King’s Landing to see.</p><p>Instead would come the sword. Her execution would give the Whitehills and Boltons all the excuse they needed to finish what Ramsay started the day he slew Ethan. Nothing could save House Forrester or anyone part of it if the Crown itself smiled on their slaughter.</p><p>Her kin. The smallfolk who relied on them. Asher’s men from Essos laying down their lives for strangers. <em>As Tom laid down his for you. </em></p><p>Knowing her voice would quaver if she spoke her consent, she simply nodded.</p><p>“Good.” Her betrothed’s triumphant voice slithered like fingers trailing down spider-silk. The door was already opening, Morgryn pulling her through. He must have made his bribes in advance. That unworried surety that he would have her, before he ever stepped into the Black Cells, was so fierce a punch to the gut she nearly doubled over as she walked.</p><p>She dimly noted that it was Lucan looking away to let them through as the door closed.</p><p>Before the day was out, Tom’s head was being forced onto the block. At Morgryn’s cue, she gave the lie that would bring the axe down. Tom met her eye from up there and his face crumpled. “Lady Mira! Please! This isn’t right!” But then King’s Landing never cared about what was right. The blade whistled downward.</p><p>Flesh and wood split with a thud. Mira felt her stomach collapse amid the crowd’s whoops and hisses. As her nails bit her palms, she remembered the feel of Damien’s blood splattering them, mixed with her sweat welling around the dagger’s cold hilt. She killed that man to save Tom’s life. Now the boy was dying to spare her the sentence. The head of the axe might as well have smashed her heart.</p><p>Morgryn, of course, had already prepared a mummer’s illusion of events for anyone who asked.</p><p>Damien’s death was a crime of passion, he proclaimed dolefully. The poor coal boy had fallen madly in love with Mira. Seeing her meet with Damien one night to discuss hiring protection, he took it for a tryst and became possessed of a jealous rage. He killed the captain then and there. But in his subsequent daily accosting of his lady love, he confused the trail of evidence so that it had, by accident, seemed to point to her. A horrible miscarriage of justice was averted only with Lord Morgryn’s timely intervention, for he had spent time enough with Mira to have realised the truth. The experience also pushed him to act on his own blooming feelings for her – a rosy detail at the end that, she observed with horror, made younger maids sigh and their elders smile.</p><p>Loving and devoted he was as a husband-to-be, he was mindful of his betrothed’s grief for what the coal boy did and, worse, her family’s plight. All the Red Keep knew of that by now, judging by the frosty gale of whispers that clung to Mira wherever she walked in the castle.</p><p>It was the perfect pretext for keeping her confined. There was always a man in his service guarding her door, or shadowing her wherever she went. Ensuring that no one could talk to her, read the truth of what Morgryn was doing on her face.</p><p>
  <em>“My betrothed should not be disturbed. She has suffered too much already, for the actions of men unfit to serve at the King’s pleasure!”</em>
</p><p>Part of her wondered what the Lannister guards in Morgryn’s pocket had thought of that. But, trapped here, she could not chase the thought for want of any knowledge of the reality.</p><p>She had traded one prison for another. Her face and arms scrubbed of the Black Cells’ grime, uriney straw picked from her hair, the tattered dress slopping around her body taken away where she never had to see it again. Yet she felt every bit as filthy, fresh from a bath and clad in a rich blue (<em>his </em>blue) gown that wreathed prettily about her figure in a silken ripple.</p><p>Her hands felt most unclean of all.</p>
<hr/><p>The new cell was a room up in a tower, detached from the Red Keep proper in quarters Morgryn hired for his stay in the capital. High enough to hit her with a wide view of King’s Landing in all its brute ugliness (and for the stench of the sewage-slick streets to come through the window), low enough to watch strolling people or docking ships below. Or seabirds coasting air currents to drift freely through the sky.</p><p>She recalled Margaery telling her of a game that the girl Sansa Stark had played with her own handmaiden. The object: to spy on ships leaving the Blackwater and invent stories about their journey and crew. Her tales, Margaery had said with a regretful smile, were always about escaping.</p><p>
  <em>You found your escape for true, child. </em>
</p><p>Sansa vanished the day Joffrey died. Once she had been all that Mira’s fellow handmaidens talked of, but her name became a rarity after her marriage to Tyrion, then a taboo after the king’s death.</p><p>Margaery wanted no one remembering any old connection between herself and a suspect of treason.</p><p>Had Mira's own name been forbidden in their circles? Little Megga and Alla, the Fossoways, Taena, Alysanne, Meredyth… friends she had eaten with, slept with, laughed with, danced with. Were all of them schooling her from their memories even now?</p><p>No, Margaery would never ask that of them. Even if she needed to distance herself from Mira, that was no reflection on the bond they had. <em>A sister’s love always,</em> she promised.</p><p>
  <em>And what must she have promised Sansa, when the girl was still like to marry her brother?</em>
</p><p>Lacking anything else to hold, Mira hugged her knees and sank into a corner.</p><p>Outside, she could still hear the gush of waves, the homey bustle of people in the streets. One might even be Margaery. She might look out now and glimpse her sister falling on the goods of a local seamstress (always local), or scattering alms, or proudly gliding through mud so that all heads turned to watch her kneel eye to eye with King’s Landing’s poorest. The dress her handmaidens' task to mend and clean. Not even that familiar chore was there for Mira to mindlessly motion through now. </p><p>Sometimes the loneliness almost made her wish for his company. That terrified her more than anything he did to her himself.</p><p>Her cell boasted little besides a bed, desk, washbowl, and privy, though all those things were improvements on its predecessor. Food and drink were delivered similarly – thrust in by a gauntlet that snatched away again at once – though the fare she could expect here was much better.</p><p>The first day saw a poached dove on a salad of sweetgrass and a cup of pomegranate wine. Mira left it untouched. That had been a battle, with naught else to occupy her mind. No distractions from the hunger pains. In the Black Cells, she had known only stale bread scraps for several days. It was some time since she last drank anything either, her throat a taut line of rope inside her neck.</p><p>Next morning, Morgryn fell to his knees beside her, pulling her to her feet. Her limbs swayed like strung puppets in a roadside show, joints cracking, bones rustling.</p><p>“Why, sweetling,” he gasped. “You’ve hardly touched your food! You must try to get it down. Keep up your health. Your family would want you to carry on.”</p><p><em>So, the mummer’s farce is to be kept up before his guards. </em>She said nothing.</p><p>His hand roved down her shoulders, rested on the hollowed small of her back. “Would you prefer… that is, would it be easier if I ate with you –?”</p><p>“No.” The guard looked up. Morgryn’s fingers dug in. A bright flare of pain shot up her spine. “No – thank you, my lord. I know you must be so busy, and I fear I should be poor company just now.”</p><p>“Impossible, sweetling.” He smeared his lips on her cheek and withdrew. “But I respect your wishes. I’d never want to impede upon your privacy. Kyllan, if you could give us a moment…”</p><p>The whey-faced man slipped out the door. Footsteps outside, then they faded.</p><p>They were alone. He caught her hair in a fist. Yanked. She thrust her hands out as she reeled forward. Snatched onto her desk as Morgryn pinned her there.</p><p>“I’m not going to <em>poison </em>you,” he said with the flat exasperation of one talking to a particularly obstinate child. “I have need of your inheritance and your womb. We both know I am a man who does not look kindly on obstacles in my way, so don’t play at being one now. I could always make this worse for you without endangering your life, Mira.”</p><p>“Why not just get it over with now? Why are we tarrying here?”</p><p>“To wait out the conflict between your brother and Ludd, of course. I’m going to let them tear each other apart, and swoop in to feast on the carrion. We’ll remain in King’s Landing until then, so I know how many loggers – or sellswords if it comes to it – to bring to Ironrath.”</p><p>He drew away in a farce of contemplation, releasing her from the prickling heat of his breath.</p><p>“Who knows what the outcome will be? It’s all one to me who loses. I’m not working with that fathead Ludd anymore. You, though…” His fingers dug hard into her again. “I’ll <em>consider</em> sharing news of your family with you, but only if you’re pliant.”</p><p>“You’d do better to tell me anyway. I know the North well, I know the Whitehills well…”</p><p>“Enough to give me false counsel that seems sound, to lead me astray and foil my plans? I agree. Be more cooperative in other ways and I will permit you knowledge of your kin’s welfare – which is hard to ensure if I am distracted with worry about you.”</p><p>The next day she ate and drank everything she was given. Unconscious and mechanical as the motions of a retreating siege machine. She never tasted any of it. Each bite was ash in her mouth.</p><p>Her shrivelled stomach soon protested too, but she pushed on.</p><p>“Good,” Morgryn crooned some days later. She had lost count. “I’m so glad you’re eating properly. This will make you feel better yet, I think. I am sorry that I took so long about it, but with how busy I've been… well, I hope it brings you comfort.”</p><p>He gestured; two men, Kyllan and another she did not know, came in carrying a heavy trunk.</p><p>
  <em>My chest. </em>
</p><p>She had been abed, weighed down with an exhaustion that would never bring sleep, similar to the hot pressure in her eyes and throat that surfaced often but never let itself become crying. (Through everything he had done so far, she had not wept a single tear. Or was unable to). But seeing a relic of her life before King’s Landing, or even Highgarden – <em>Ironrath – </em>gave her strength enough to rise.</p><p>The <em>thunk</em> of ironwood against a stone floor was a sound so achingly familiar, too. </p><p>Kyllan and the other guard left. Morgryn smiled at her. “You’ve more than a few books. I was quite impressed. Those you borrowed I returned, but those you owned…”</p><p>Mira met him with silence. Kept her jaw set, her spine straight.</p><p>“What I am doing is <em>expensive</em>, Mira. Surely, you’ve not forgotten that. And those books… it was a fair amount of money for someone like you to be holding. You have to keep yourself in some way, you know. The ones that looked like they would fetch a fat purse, I sold. Fetch a fat purse many of them did. You can be proud of that. This one, though…”</p><p>He produced her Lomas Longstrider.<em> Seven Wonders Made by Man. </em>Rodrik’s own gift, half for her nameday, half to cheer her in her unease about being sent away to Highgarden.</p><p>“Your brother – one of the dead ones, I believe – wrote on the front page. A sweet little message, to be sure. Damned shame he did, though, otherwise it could well have fetched me more than all the others combined. It seems a rare copy, with the illustrations. Is it the only thing you have left of him? I think it must be very valuable to you.”</p><p>“Think what you like, my lord.”</p><p>“As you will.” He flung it to the floor.</p><p>The cry left her before she could bite it back.</p><p>“Oh – you should have said.” He watched her with amusement in his stony eyes. “Pick it up then, sweetling. Since it’s of value.” She did not move. "Bend over. Pick it up.”</p><p>A sudden swell of anger gave her the courage to tell him to do it himself.</p><p>Defiance was not something he dealt with well. Before leaving, he forced her to her knees and smashed her head against the chest. No wood in the world was as hard or sharp-edged as Forrester ironwood. A starburst of blood before her eyes. She rolled, clutching her skull, now a well of throbbing, liquid pain.</p><p>“You fainted,” he informed her, a towering shadow above, light veining the oil in his smooth brown hair. “Try not to do it again. We don’t want rumours spreading that you're with child already.”</p><p>He left to call something for the wound. Alone again, Mira turned to inspect her chest.</p><p>Almost every book she owned was gone. Though she did find the rose broach Margaery had given her, passed down from Lady Olenna. Easily the most valuable thing she owned, though that of course was little to the Tyrells. It felt cold in her fingers, enough to sting. Margaery’s troubled frown swum back into her memory.</p><p>
  <em>“I have to distance myself from you for a time… when I am queen, I can help you again.”</em>
</p><p>Mira set the broach aside. Going further, she found the compiled letters from her family, bound neatly in a way that told her Morgryn had read every one of them. There was Ethan’s carving of their sigil, made after she and Asher had taught him how. <em>Little brother. </em> Her eyes burned.</p><p>Ethan had also packed her ironwood blocks and a whittling knife to make carvings of her own with, but she had lost the blade leaving Highgarden for King’s Landing.</p><p>She held on longest to the Yunkish golden mark Asher sent her – it still dazed her to think that he had travelled so far – watching the little coin blink in the shivering candlelight. <em>Does Morgryn mean to tell me that I may as well be a Yunkai’i bed slave, letting me keep this? </em>A shudder went through her. No. She could not let that blow land. The least valuable thing in this chest was her most precious one. The coin was Asher saying <em>I am thinking of you, little sister, I love you, stay strong.</em></p><p>Mira closed her hand tight – but she almost dropped the mark when she saw what else lay inside.</p><p>A letter stamped with a blood-red lion seal. The word <em>Forrester </em>written above. Tyrion’s ironwood decree. She had not been able to bring herself to burn it.</p><p><em>I know, </em>Morgryn might have said. <em>I could have ruined you just by dropping this anywhere in the keep.</em></p><p>At that moment her hatred and fear of him surged up like a poked beast and screamed. Bursting through her fingers as they snatched on the silken mantle of her blue dress. She tore it to shreds. It was all the release she had. Material fell apart in jagged waves under her clawing nails, each tear a grate on her ears.</p><p>Kyllan came in with a parcel from Grand Maester Pycelle and found her curled-up form trembling in a puddle of rent silks.</p><p>“Please help me,” Mira whispered as he guided her to the bed to sit down.</p><p>Some dull light kindled in Kyllan’s eyes as he paused to study her head. For half a heartbeat the weight in her chest dared lift, but then he dropped his gaze, focusing on cleaning her wound.</p><p>“Try not to faint again,” he told her.</p><p>Punishment for the dress was at least spared for the morrow.</p>
<hr/><p>Mira kept one torn strip of silk hidden beneath her pillow. There were times she found herself taking it out, rolling it, pulling it taut. Wishful thinking. Even if she did somehow get lucky enough to strangle him, she would only be condemned as a madwoman, a murderer. Back to the dungeons with no escape from the block this time. The Whitehills could swoop in anew with their chances of a deal with the Crown considerably improved.</p><p>Morgryn, or Lannister-backed steel. No matter what, she was inflicting one of them on her family.</p><p>
  <em>Unless I get out of this.</em>
</p><p>One night, when she knew it was not Kyllan on shift, she shrieked. Shrieked until her every breath rattled her throat like glass panes. The guard rushed in. Laid his hands on her shaking form <em>(don’t, take them away, I don’t know you in the dark you could be </em>him<em>)</em></p><p>At last, she let herself be calmed in his – Arton, was his name – arms.</p><p>As she looked at him, she widened her eyes, softened them, then set her jaw as she pretended to gather herself. “Truth be told, this was the first sleep I have had in a long while. It's evaded me ever since I learned what befell my brother Rodrik.”</p><p>Best thing was, she was telling it true.</p><p>Mira saw the question rising in Arton’s eyes and forestalled it. “I could talk to Rickard, I know. But you see, Ironrath’s recovery is such difficult work for him already – I would not add to that. I would not make myself a burden.”</p><p>Polite gallantry compelled him to protest. “Never, milady, surely!”</p><p>She sighed. “I just don’t want my husband to <em>worry</em>. He’d be grateful for any chance to help me…”</p><p>It did not take long after that. The next day, Arton came to her with a draught of essence of nightshade from Pycelle.</p><p>“I had hoped to have of him milk of the poppy,” he told her with an apologetic smile. “But when I asked, he said a third cousin of Queen Cersei's nearly emptied his stores of the stuff after that pig-head Lord Andros was sent to the block.”</p><p>“No, this is wonderful. <em>Thank</em> you.” She beamed at him, but let it falter as her eyes wandered. “Rickard and I know the man you speak of. Lyman Lannister of Lannisport.”</p><p>“O-oh! You mean, that one from the tourney who…”</p><p>“The same.” So, that story had spread through the Keep. “He knew Lord Andros too. And that man, he… well. It’s not something that should be spoken of in polite company.”</p><p>“Don’t count as polite as I’m no nobleman, milady,” he pointed out cheerfully. She laughed.</p><p>“Good! Too many are like Andros. That one was not an example you should follow, to be sure.”</p><p>Arton laughed with her. “Why, was he truly so bad?”</p><p>“Well…” She demurred, but not so much that his earnest dampened before she let him have it out of her.</p><p>“The first thing Andros did after he cheated Rickard out of Whitehill’s deal was go after the most vulnerable person named Lannister he could find. He knew Lyman would have enough in his coffers to get him anything he wanted. And he had the means to force him…”</p><p>On the morrow, Morgryn told her that he had an idea: meeting the man who had replaced him as Andros and Ludd’s business partner.</p><p>“I would have thought you hated him,” Mira remarked as they walked. Powder smothered her bruised temple, stinging like ten spiders’ bites as she raised a brow in inquiry.</p><p>“Why should I? The fault was with Andros, not this un-maned lion he managed to hunt. I told you I met Ludd first, did I not? I was the one who anticipated how the ironwood market would <em>thrive</em> once the War of the Five Kings ended. I was the one who approached Ludd first, the moment I heard his House came into half the North's ironwood groves. Yet the fool pushed me out for – what? Andros was better company?”</p><p>“Now he is a corpse, my lord.”</p><p>“Yes, my biggest competitor dead. You did very well for me there, sweetling. So helpful. And I heard you were sweet enough around Lyman too, enough to make him sing his song. Do it again today – I’d wager the sight of you will make him pliable, what with the guilt about his part in Ludd’s capture of Ironrath.”</p><p>Mira pulled from him abruptly. “Ludd did <em>what</em>?”</p><p>He gave her that horrible, sickle-curve smile and held up a letter. The broken seal was a familiar nautical blue colour, bearing the Whitehill mountain and pointed star above.</p><p>“I’ll even let you read it yourself afterwards. <em>If</em> you are good.”</p><p>She had planned out all the ways she could alert Lyman. Errant comments about having sufferance of threats and betrayal from someone they had trusted in common. Carefully placed jibes to make Morgryn’s placid mask slip, that murderous fury spark in his eyes. Furtive glances. Small gestures. In the end, she could make herself do none of it.</p><p>Her thoughts were as fixed on the letter as its broken Whitehill seal. <em>I have to know. </em></p><p>The talk went well enough. Lyman was plainly gratified to see a familiar face in her, the due congratulations for their betrothal allowed for enough small talk to ease him in… and Morgryn’s wager proved correct. When the conversation turned to Whitehill encroachment on Forrester land, Lannister blanched. His eyes nearly popped with horror as they met Mira’s.</p><p>“If – good gods, what I did to help them! My lady, if there is anything, <em>anything</em> I could do…”</p><p>Morgryn squeezed her hand. “Well,” he told Lyman gravely, “as the ironwood trade remains very much open, what is done could yet be undone…”</p><p>They finished with a promise that Lyman would think about it, and that was enough for now, her betrothed said. The seed was planted. Lonely and purposeless as Lyman was in court, he was sure to come back to them eventually with his assent.</p><p>Before Morgryn closed the door on her again, he made good on his promise to pass the letter through.</p><p>She sank to the floor once she finished reading, the memory of how to breathe fled. Even if she tried, the crushing weight in her chest would have kept it corralled in her lungs. </p><p>Her mother was dead. Asher – lord for a day – gone, presumed dead. Most of his sellswords killed. Talia and little Ryon confirmed not dead, but were captives. Elaena Glenmore had vanished. Malcolm, apparently, never returned from Essos. <em>He is dead too, then.</em></p><p>No wonder her betrothed was willing to let her see it. The brother who posed the most serious obstacle to his inheriting Ironrath was out of the way, her surviving siblings conveniently vulnerable enough that he could leverage them against her if they survived, or failing that, simply kill them. Either or. He would win.</p><p>The privacy of her cell, at least, spared her the prick of prying eyes. She could break down and lease her tears in silence, lest Kyllan or Arton hear.</p><p>Mira had no energy to play the game with them anymore.</p><p>It had been midmorning when they met Lyman, but sunset was painting the room in a bloody haze before she gathered enough strength to think on how to defend herself now.</p><p>If Morgryn came meaning to take his rights and make their betrothal safely unbreakable, his road to Ironrath otherwise clear, she had the nightshade to resist him with. She closed the little bottle in her fist. Strangling him should be a last resort, only if he decided on killing her and she was doomed anyway. The nightshade would have to be used sparingly, then. No more than a smear upon her lips for him to drink unknowing in a kiss. Just to make him sleep for a night. There would be no explaining it if he actually died in her bed. Even a few drops undiluted could kill –</p><p>Mira’s hand uncurled slowly as she looked again at the little black draught.</p><p>The realisation was fire fizzing to life in her blood.</p><p>Morgryn had no idea how far she would go to stop him. The full draught of nightshade in her hand proved that. Arton could never have gotten it for her had it occurred to Morgryn for a second that she might kill herself before their marriage. He must have taken her docile acquiescence in the Black Cells to mean she feared death itself.</p><p>But the executioner’s blade was one thing. <em>Mine own hand, another.</em> That the Forresters’ plight was widely known at the Red Keep meant that her suicide would surprise no one. Be unsuspicious.</p><p>There was no undoing her betrothal. Whatever she did now, Morgryn had a claim. But could her dying before they wed weaken it? <em>He has a dangerous reputation, </em>Lord Tarwick told her once. If her sudden death fed that flame, perhaps the smoke would reach Margaery’s nose. The help she had continually promised would come too late for Mira – but perhaps not for Talia and Ryon. Ironrath might be saved for them. Elaena, too. However powerful Morgryn liked to play at being, no merchant lord could stand against a queen’s wrath.</p><p>At the very least, she could hope that Lyman might be sharply dislodged from Morgryn’s plans by the news of her death. That broken deal would be enough to get the rumours airborne. Relying on them to fly where she wanted, though, and landing in just the right places…</p><p><em>It is not a very good best chance, </em>she thought with resignation as she curled into a ball on her bed. <em>But our best chance it is. So be it. Talia. Ryon. Iron from Ice, little ones.</em></p>
<hr/><p>Dedicating her thoughts to it helped lift the black cloud that choked her every time her mind strayed back to Asher and Mother. Planning her death did more than anything else to help her forget the hole punched through her chest. <em>That should frighten me. </em>But with the clarity of a focused mind, she could better reflect on how to play to the Red Keep.</p><p>Would the nightshade alone be enough? <em>No, it must needs be a fit of grief. </em>Poison was too controlled and methodical. Pycelle or whoever else examined her might conclude that she had unknowingly overdosed and that would not serve. The court needed to imagine her hysterical in her final moments. That Morgryn had her to himself all this time, knew how grief-stricken she was, and yet not helped her. To make any gossip worth spreading, it had to be spiced.</p><p>Taking some sharp object to herself, then, instead of drinking the nightshade? <em>I have no needles nor my whittling knife. </em>Just to get a decent shard she would have to break something. Kyllan or Arton would burst in at the noise and that would be it. Part of her thought, perhaps a bit traitorously, that she lacked the courage to do such a thing anyway.</p><p>Then her gaze fell on the window. Watching light and dark play on the glass, she made up her mind.</p><p>It was the hour of ghosts. Lights were blinking out across King’s Landing and Mira had counted a safe two hours since the sound of shuffling feet outside her barred door. Even Kyllan and Arton had to sleep. Her own feet took her across the room to her desk chair. Quietly, she moved it in front the window to reach the ledge. She was breathing rapidly; it flamed the glass panel in fog.</p><p>Gathering herself, she opened the doors and wavered atop the ledge.</p><p>Air hit her lungs, clear and sharp, like a blade cleaving through her chest. Like drawing a first true breath after moons of smoke and incense stopping her lungs. The winds had changed. Coming from the east was a breeze carrying the sea’s salty tang, gently brushing her nose, driving away the stench of the streets below. Mira took in the lovely smell, her hands relaxing on the rough stone. Her skirts billowed at her ankles in a silky black caress. Coaxing. Reassuring.</p><p>As calm settled over her, she let her eyes drift one last time over the streets of the city.</p><p>Fewer people out so late at night, but those that were she could see clearly. Three men slipping discreetly through a door, a beautiful woman closing it on them. Marching guards. Children ducking between alleys. Crones huddled together with a cat weaving between their feet. Sailors knocking mugs. A hooded beggar, one truly desperate to be out so late, clad in tattered brown roughspun with a child scrambling in his wake –</p><p>It was no child. The world slanted as Mira stumbled in shock. Her dress tangled at her feet, all breath fled her lungs, blood roared in her ears as the fall opened up beneath and her lips parted in a scream –</p><p>Her hand snatched purchase on a furrow in the stone and she managed to steady herself. The relief dizzied her until she recovered, refocused on the two figures at the dock.</p><p>She recognised that waddling gait.</p><p>Tyrion Lannister halted ponderingly to tell his companion something. The other man rounded on him, seemed to deliver a rebuke. After a few more traded words they continued on their way at a hastened pace. Though straining, Mira’s eyes followed them to a man in captain’s garb lingering with his ship at the harbour. The hooded man apparently so poor he had to spend his nights begging pressed a large purse into the captain’s hands. After a moment, Lannister was waved onto the ship. It soon set sail, slipping out of Blackwater Bay like a shadow.</p><p>Mira did not need to keep watching to know. All that had happened she could fill in. Tension began to leave her muscles and the knot in her gut unravelled, leaving her lighter than the air still licking her ankles. Her nerves hummed with frenzied energy. Breath rushed from her parted lips, pluming in silver flowers before her eyes.</p><p>All her senses were heightened, wildfire-charged, shot through with life, life, life.</p><p><em>Why be glad I did not fall?</em> some distant part of her wondered as she eased herself down. <em>My family are lost. My House lost. </em>She was as Malcolm had been after the Branfields’ slaughter. Alone in the world with only his good-brother’s charity and his sister for support, and she lacked even those things. Margaery’s sisterhood would resume too late, if ever.</p><p>But her mind was outracing all that. She had to swallow a wild laugh welling up inside her.</p><p>
  <em>Tyrion’s decree. I still have Tyrion’s decree.</em>
</p><p>The idea, planted, would not leave her. It rooted inside her mind, seized it. Just like the day she had imagined forging a letter to Elaena saying that Margaery willed her marrying into House Forrester.</p><p>
  <em>No merchant lord can stand against a queen’s wrath.</em>
</p><p>In the end, Mira had decided not to do that to her. She herself had feared the weight of being obliged to wed long before Morgryn. But the risk alone, steep as it was, had not been enough to convince herself out of it. The danger was even greater here.</p><p><em>"It just became," </em>Morgryn said in her memory,<em> "a very bad time to be linked to Tyrion Lannister."</em></p><p>The murder of a Lannister guard was a minor crime compared to this. Her execution would be far worse than beheading, if she were discovered, and prefaced with torture besides. Fear squeezed her throat.</p><p>
  <em>But Talia and Ryon would be in no graver danger than they already are. And if I succeed, Morgryn goes down without getting near Ironrath – and the Crown will not say a word.</em>
</p><p> She took the chair back to her desk and slowly opened her Longstrider. Some days earlier she tried reading it and had to stop when the pages blurred, but this time no tears nipped her eyes. Oddly detached from the giddiness in her chest, her mind was completely calm. Focused. There were several blank pages on at least one side, a few on both. Running her fingers down one, she hesitated, feeling an instinctual prick of discomfort at what she was doing. A book. A lovely one and thoughtful, on a subject that captivated her. It really was one of the best gifts she had ever been given. <em>Rodrik would understand. </em></p><p>Every empty page she tore out, noiselessly as possible, pinching out each with care. If the guards ever thought to inspect the room, she could slip the pages back inside. Tyrion's decree she would hide where she found it.</p><p><em>If they did find them… </em>Morgryn might suspect her then, but she had to risk it for the plan to work.</p><p>Mira broke the crimson seal of the Lannister lion, unfolded the paper, and began to read.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The "pick it up" bit was inspired by a confrontation scene in Peaky Blinders.</p><p>I know that in GOT's S4 finale Tyrion was placed in a crate before being loaded on the ship; I'm fudging canon a bit in places. In the books Varys disguises them so they can casually slip into the bay and out of Dodge.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Beskha I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for some xenophobia, violence (including some inflicted on a child), bloodshed, and death.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cold Northern air was one of the bitterest things Beskha had ever tasted. Between the constant recurring terror as a girl that her death had finally come, to blood and shame filling her mouth after every pit killing, to bile after too many cups of wine, she had more than enough to compare it to.</p><p>Thankfully, there had been no snow since the night she and Ryon fled Ironrath. Her first sighting of the stuff, dribbling down from the black maw of the night like splintered crystals, had stopped her breath. Then came the cold. It punched right through the furs she had taken for herself and Ryon from Ironrath’s stores. At least the frost-webbed mud also slowed pursuers; even after the snow cleared, the Whitehills never closed the distance. No echoing voices, no storm of distant hooves on the wind.</p><p>Though the silence brought its own kind of dread.</p><p>Ryon did little to fill it at first. But as the days passed, he grew more responsive, alert, like a wilted flower leaning up to the sun in the dappled light of the wolfswood. Riding through it was familiar to him, she realised. The Forresters grew up here. Asher and his siblings. Their childhoods had been this green labyrinth; trails to ride, thickets to explore, groves to hunt in, play in.</p><p>Though the promise of going home to Ironrath would never be there again.</p><p>If Ryon understood that, he seemingly took comfort in using those memories to guide them; pointing out landmarks, finding edible berries and roots, or collecting certain nettles that could be brewed into teas.</p><p>Over a fire each night, he boiled those mixtures in a stolen helm she let him use as a cooking pot while they rested and the horse cropped. The end result was usually unpleasant to taste – certainly no dusk rose tea – but it burned away the bitter cold on Beskha’s tongue, and the warmth through her chest and bones was sweet relief against the chill of evenfall.</p><p>Their brown sneezed mightily. <em>You and me both.</em></p><p>“Seems to like this cold as much as I do,” remarked Beskha as she unlaced her armour.</p><p>“It’s because she’s a courser.” Ryon threw one of their furs over the horse’s back. “Bred for war and summertime hunting. The garrons at Highpoint all had much thicker coats by now.”</p><p>What they all three needed was to go south, out of this wood, away from the winter and the Whitehills. <em>But how can I leave the North not knowing if Asher is alive? </em></p><p>“How much further to the White Knife, Ryon?”</p><p>The boy gathered his bearings. “If we’re going<em> around</em> Stonewood?”</p><p>“Yes.” That was where they killed Rodrik. Beskha would not give them a chance to repeat that ambush in the grey snare of the port’s walls. “The winter town, too. We’re keeping clear.”</p><p>“If we're avoiding Castle Cerwyn too… that’s another week. But we <em>have</em> come quite far.”</p><p>“Further than <em>them</em>. That’s the important thing.” Speed and stamina were apparently where their courser had those garrons beat. Weather forcing them to slow notwithstanding, Beskha had been able to keep her at a consistently brisk pace without much strain. “Not that any patrol that did catch up would last long on the end of my blades.”</p><p>They shared a smile at that. “Can you fight with both at once?”</p><p>“That’s what they were made for. They’re not like Westerosi longswords, they’re two halves of one weapon. As for me, I was trained not to rely on one hand over the other.”</p><p>“Did you teach Asher to fight like you?”</p><p>“Not with those,” she hedged, knowing where this was going. Many nights before, the boy’s eyes had strayed to her weapons and armour, tracing the edges of the blades longingly while he helped stack them. <em>I could be your squire, </em>he said shyly once. When Beskha asked the word’s meaning, the answer came as no surprise: an apprentice to a knight, a warrior.</p><p>“Will you show me something?” There it was.</p><p>Beskha swallowed a sigh. <em>This is not the pits, and it could help him. </em>“Let me see your bruises first.”</p><p>There were more than those he wore on his face. Those were fading now into faint lilac dust, but angrier ones lay beneath his shirt.</p><p>“It happened when I tried to escape,” Ryon said quietly. “I heard them planning to ambush Rodrik when they traded me for Gryff. I ran to stop them getting the chance, but then that man Harys caught me…”</p><p>She laid a hand on his shoulder, gritting her teeth against a scream. They did this to a <em>child</em>. “You were very brave.”</p><p>“Rodrik died anyway.”</p><p>“That was not your fault. Do you understand? Those Whitehills are the only ones to blame.”</p><p>Ryon set his jaw. “I <em>know.</em> I want to be ready when I see them again.”</p><p>Resolve was etched into his little face, steeling his eyes, hardening his mouth. He looked so much like a younger Asher, usually it was him Beskha saw in the boy. Now she saw herself. The girl who ran from Dezhor zo Raza, through shadowed wynds and alleys until she was caught and whipped for the attempt.</p><p>“I’ll see that you’ll be ready.”</p><p>Offensive attacks were her custom, but she focused on evasive moves for Ryon. Blocks, dodges, ways to spot weaknesses and exploit them, how to escape arm locks and grabs.</p><p>“Ludd got me like this once. I bit his hand, but he got me again before I could run,” the boy said.</p><p>“Good instinct. If ever there’s a next time, use that moment to make certain you won’t be grabbed again. Assuming it’s a man – what am I saying, this is Westeros – turn and kick him in the balls while he’s startled. If he has a dagger you can reach…”</p><p>“Oh! We can practice with this!” He drew a blade from his own hip. It was wooden – <em>the famous ironwood?</em> – with untidy inscriptions on each side. “I had it with me when they took me to Highpoint. Kept it hidden. There wasn’t anything I could do with it, but I made it myself, named it, and it’s <em>mine</em>.” More than a little pride crept into his voice.</p><p>“Do highborn lordlings always name their weapons?”</p><p>“Only the best ones.”</p><p>“Modest little craftsman, you are.”</p><p>“We should name her, too!” Ryon pointed to their brown, his eyes narrowing in grave contemplation. Mouth twitching, she waited. “Oatcake,” he decreed.</p><p>“Oatcake the warhorse.” She could not help the laugh spluttering out of her. “Very intimidating.”</p><p>“She’s not imitating, she saved us.”</p><p>Beskha did not argue. <em>As he must see it, both the animal and its namesake are from home.</em></p><p>They kept at it, him pricking her a few times with his makeshift dagger. Once they tired, they made themselves a makeshift bed of bracken, leaves, and branches. Beskha’s swords were close enough that she could grab them in a second. Ryon kept his blade with him.</p><p>“I named it Two Brothers,” he said, wriggling against her. Sleeping closely was habit now for the sake of warmth, but their activity had taken the bite from the cold. Just now it was about something else. “I wrote Ethan and Rodrik’s names, so that I would never forget them.”</p><p>“And Asher?” she had to ask.</p><p>“…Wasn’t there when I made it. He left when I was two. Or, um, no. Was I three…?”</p><p>“Leaving Ironrath wasn’t his choice,” she replied firmly, “and he never forgot any of you.”</p><p>"Sometimes I thought Mother and Rodrik would. Forget about me, I mean.”</p><p>“I never knew Rodrik,” Beskha felt a fresh pang of sadness saying it, “but everything that I know <em>of </em>him tells me he’d never have abandoned you. And remember how happy your mother and sister were to see you at the feast?”</p><p>“I know. I wasn’t worried after they came to Highpoint for me. Even…” Ryon swallowed, “even when Rodrik told Ludd to go ahead and cut my throat. It was only because he never would. Not if Gryff would die too.”</p><p>There were no words she had for that.</p><p>“Worse was when he said that they didn’t want me at Ethan’s funeral. Or that my father died because he was a coward.”</p><p>Beskha had no love for Gregor Forrester herself. It was strange; she had walked in his family’s home, seen his wife and daughter weeping for Rodrik as they must have for him – and in a grisly awful way, him exiling Asher made him responsible for one of the best things that ever happened to her. Realising that the first time during a night of particularly hefty drinking had sickened her to the point of true vomit. Before anything else, Gregor was a looming shadow who hurt her little brother.</p><p>Even so, she could not let Ryon, <em>also my brother,</em> stay scared and doubtful. “Ludd is a fucking liar.”</p><p>The boy nodded, body taut with anger. “He needs to die.”</p><p>“He will. Him and his one-eyed shit of a son. Rodrik will have justice.”</p><p>“But how far must we run until then?”</p><p>She shifted onto her side to face him. “Did you know that <em>all men must die</em> is a phrase people greet each other with in Braavos?” A smile tugged at her mouth as interest glimmered in Ryon’s big green eyes, chasing out the despair in them. “<em>Valar Morghulis, </em>in Valyrian.</p><p>“The Braavosi don’t own it, though. You find people saying it all over Essos, and that is because it is true. All men must die. That includes those Whitehill scum. They’ll each get their turn, and <em>how</em>, but not while we’re in danger. They’re not worth that, Ryon. Not worth our lives. The best way we can hurt them now is stopping them from ever making a captive of you again.” <em>Or worse, you being the only Forrester boy-child and thus more threatening than your sisters to leave alive. That’s always the way of it with these Houses and their games.</em> “As long as I’m with you, they’ll never come close. Understand?”</p><p>He smiled, nodded. Eventually his breathing slowed, but sleep did not come at once for Beskha.</p><p>Her thoughts drifted inexorably to Amaya and the others. None of them had the shield of being too valuable to kill – they all would be, unless they turned to the obviously stronger side or surrendered. Amaya would do neither. She had hardly changed from the woman Beskha knew years ago.</p><p>The Sun-Blaze to her Basilisk, she who laughed at the arrays of blood they painted the sands with, always brimming with fervid energy that spread to anyone near like catching fire – the charisma that made her leader – with all the casual indifference to pain or ill odds of far greener fighters. Because Amaya never stopped being the prized victor. Goddess of the pits. Never had to learn failure or grief or consequence, and the lesson would not stick this late in the day.</p><p>
  <em>I should have tried to rescue her as well, and not only at Ironrath.</em>
</p><p>She swallowed, pained friction against the swelling lump in her throat. They had water, but she wanted wine, the familiar impulse to drown rising fears making her fingers twitch around empty air. Beskha did not know if it made it better or worse, to think that Asher had done what Amaya never would and called the poisoning off.</p><p>“Ryon?” The boy hummed sleepily in response. “When Ludd was spewing out all that horseshit about your parents and Rodrik… what did Gwyn have to say?”</p><p>Silence again while he considered. “I asked her if he was lying. She said he was blinded by anger, seeing what made him feel right to see. That I shouldn’t listen to what he said.”</p><p><em>Would that she could follow her own advice. </em>In better circumstances, Beskha would have liked to support her and Asher against their families’ bullshit. After sizing up her brother’s lover for due inspection, of course. But Gwyn had either known of her father’s intentions or she had not, which made her either an enemy just as dangerous as Ludd or a fool just as <em>blinded.</em></p><p>Neither recommended trust, but there was no other choice now – and before escaping Ironrath, Beskha <em>had</em> glimpsed her getting between Asher and another man’s blade. <em>Fool it is.</em> Credit where due, Gwyn had picked her side that night.</p><p><em>My little brother’s life is in your hands, girl. </em>Beskha let her eyes fall shut. <em>Break that trust, I break you.</em></p>
<hr/><p>“How do they say <em>all men must die</em> in Braavos again?” asked Ryon as they rode. “Valar…”</p><p>“Morghulis, little swordsman.”</p><p>“And what’s<em> that</em> in Valyrian?”</p><p>She considered. “Azantīsos is the closest thing, but unlike <em>swordsman, </em>it has no gender.”</p><p>“Valar Morghulis… Azantīsos…” He savoured the words like sweets. “Are you from Braavos, then?”</p><p>“If only,” she huffed. The courtesans were stunning there. Good inns, playhouses, and halfway decent opponents for a duel could be found on near every Braavosi street. No slaver ever stalked any. “I was born in Meereen, though it stopped being home for me when I was very young. As soon as I was able, I travelled across many different places. That’s how Asher and I met.”</p><p>Braavos was also very expensive. Had she and Asher lingered in Yunkai, gotten more ransoms from fleeing Wise Masters, they might just have made enough coin to visit Valyria’s bastard daughter many times over – nay, to go wherever they wanted. To not even need sell their swords anymore.</p><p><em>Together until we’re dead</em> was always their vow, knowing it would likely come quick on the point of a blade… but with such bounties, they might have bought more time, their own manse, their own land to live off, found a sweeter and belated death in the bottom of too many wine cups, spiced with fine whores peppering kisses down their throats, actually cheating their way into old age – no.</p><p>
  <em>You both knew what going to Westeros meant, that he’d have duties to his House to fulfil. You accepted that and told him you were with him.</em>
</p><p>Ryon’s fidgeting in the saddle brought her attention back to him. His face was sympathetic. “Did it stop being home for you because it was destroyed like Ironrath?”</p><p>Beskha choked a pained laugh into a growled snort.</p><p>“If you’re worried about the travel, don’t be. We’ll go only as far as either of us care to. Remember the plan?”</p><p>“We go to White Harbour. We try to learn what’s happened at Ironrath. Depending, we might stay, or continue on to Essos where we’ll find safety for the winter, coin, and sellswords to gut our enemies with when spring returns.”</p><p>“Very good.”</p><p>“We have to be fast, then. <em>Winter is coming</em>.”</p><p>“I noticed!”</p><p>Ryon cocked his head. “How? Like maesters do? They said autumn came a few moons after Father and Rodrik left to fight for King Robb, but it’s still warm enough to be summer now.”</p><p>
  <em>What the fuck – </em>
</p><p>“Do we have any food?” he asked.</p><p>They ran out yesterday. Beskha had prepared a plump purse of coin before leaving Ironrath, but for once they were out of the wolfswood; they had avoided villages thus far. “Anything you find now.”</p><p>“I’m really hungry.”</p><p>As was she, and shivering some – <em>warm enough to be summer –</em> so she reined up Oatcake. Ryon dropped onto the ground, scuttling away in search of something edible on the forest floor.</p><p>“Where I can see you!” she warned, dismounting, but the bushes had already swallowed him up. Oatcake’s reins in hand, she followed his rustling through the undergrowth until other noises joined it. Beskha stopped. Woodsmoke and the smell of cooking fish hit her nose. A growl rattled her stomach and her feet started moving of their own will.</p><p>She found Ryon crouched rigid behind a rock, peeking over it to watch two men grilling a salmon in a clearing. One remained squatting with his eyes on the food while the other – old, from the way his legs shivered under him – slowly rose to greet her.</p><p>“Well met! I am Harlon. Would you like to share our fire?”</p><p><em>A trap. </em>One they were so confident in, they did not bother with subtlety. She laughed harshly. “You think – after last time…”</p><p>The younger one straightened at the fire behind her voice. His gaze went to her swords. Locked onto her hand as it moved to grasp the hilt of one. “You’re a woman. You even know how to use them?”</p><p>“I could show you how well.”</p><p>“Wait!” Ryon ran out from behind the rock. “I know that sigil on their leather! They’re Brownbarrow men. A good House.”</p><p>“You’re right, lad,” nodded Harlon, his hazel eyes crinkling. “A good House, one deserving of a kinder fate than the gods gave it. Her ladyship lost all her male kin at the Twins, and the North many fine men in them.”</p><p>Beskha could not help glancing at his companion. “A woman liege lord you can accept, but not a woman armed?”</p><p>“Not all women have to be like the Mormonts and you Dornish.” He hunched over the cookfire. “At least you both lost that bloody accent. Plain southron don’t sound so terrible as Dornish.”</p><p>“Fucking shut up, Martyn,” said Harlon amiably. “Riverlanders are southron, but they were King Robb’s people, too. Fought ‘side them, didn’t we?” He nodded at Ryon, smiled. “Offer still stands, if you’re cold. And there’s enough on the salmon for four if one’s a smaller mouth.”</p><p>Ryon looked to her, a wary question in his eyes. Her reaction seemed to concern him more than the offer to share the fire itself. <em>It’s a normal ask, for Westerosi, </em>she realised. How else would Northerners survive their winters but through banding together, even if strangers?</p><p><em>If swords do get drawn, I’d win. </em>And gain an excuse to skewer Martyn.</p><p>Beskha awkwardly inclined her head as she and Ryon sat. The strangeness of the interaction still chafed, but it became easier to forget that with the cookfire’s warmth and the salmon to eat. Hunger urged her to quaff her portion in rapid gulps but she made herself chew slowly; it put Harlon off turning his small talk on her, asking questions about Dorne she would be unable to field.</p><p>Ryon handled it well enough. He spoke easily of the Dornish marches and lords based there. As Beskha listened, she recalled parts of Malcolm’s prattling at Asher. Something about House Branfield’s atypically good relations with Dorne putting their family on the Targaryen side through a series of rebellions, unlike some Reachermen with more elastic loyalties. <em>We were close confidants of the red dragon, and could be again, </em>he had said, as if that meant anything grander than glorified arse-licking. But Malcolm’s sister, Lady Elissa, must have reared her children on that history, too. Their maternal half-heritage. <em>At least it serves us well now. </em></p><p>“We lost family at the Twins, as well,” blurted Ryon, stopping her thoughts and all other talk.</p><p>Martyn looked up. “You’ve kin in the North?”</p><p>“Had,” she corrected, seizing the chance to pre-empt further questions. “We’re for White Harbour now. We’ll eventually get to the rest of our family from there.”</p><p>Ryon broke down. All through their journey he had held it back. His bruised face dissolved into a red crumple, throat heaving as he hauled in breaths between sobs. <em>I’m sorry, </em>Beskha almost said, before he lunged into her side. After a pause, she returned the embrace, resting her chin on his head.</p><p>Martyn walked up to them abruptly, setting a wineskin and a leather bag with some breads and cheeses left inside at Beskha’s feet. “For your journey. Ours is shorter. We need less.”</p><p>She blinked. He had to be hungry himself. Younger than Harlon, yet his cheeks were nearly as hollowed, his clothes slumping around a too-thin body.</p><p>“There’s been a good many people fucked over by the Red Wedding,” he explained, “and again by the Boltons since.”</p><p>“Martyn…” began Harlon in warning.</p><p>“I don’t care if the bastard hears and comes to flay me. Those who look hard enough know.”</p><p>Even the wind fell silent in answer, as if his words had branded the air they breathed. Hanging there, above the growly crackles of the cookfire, burning with just as much force. Beskha took his offered food, but also quietly laid a silver stag by each of their satchels before she and Ryon left.</p>
<hr/><p>The White Knife – or its tributary – was not a fluid cut through the landscape as the name suggested. When Beskha travelled up those waters the first time with Asher, Amaya, and the others, they had needed to switch their sailing ship for a river runner to traverse the upstream rapids. They were frothing now still, around rocks poking out like fangs of a teething beast. The sight gladdened her. Snow was falling again and the absence of ice glazing the Knife’s edge meant that the cold would not be too terrible.</p><p>No boats in sight. According to Ryon, that was abnormal despite the river’s temper. Only Bolton and Whitehill destruction could have stopped activity at such an important trading site, he said. Sat on the headwaters, Stonewood port received many goods from the wolfswood Houses, Forrester ironwood included, which were then funnelled down through the winter town and onto White Harbour.</p><p>“That why it’s called Stonewood?” she had asked Asher on their journey up. “Ironwood is as hard as?”</p><p>“I’d assumed the same. Great minds, aye? Apparently, stone was the other main trade it was built for. It’s near the mountain quarries too, and the Whitehills were masons before they took a glorious shit on their share of the ironwood trees – and ours.”</p><p>“Can’t picture it, your Houses ever sharing anything in common.”</p><p>“Turned out there was once a lot, Gwyn and I learned…” he halted abruptly, but she pounced on it.</p><p>“We’ve not talked about that. Ever since we started looking for sellswords, we’ve been preparing for war, little brother, but how will you do for being on the opposite side to<em> her</em>?”</p><p>He smiled a thin ghost of his usual grin. “It’s been five years, sister. She’ll have been wed. I can keep my promise to kill the lot – a Whitehill’s not still a Whitehill if she stops being a Whitehill.”</p><p>“Wisdom for days. Not just a pretty face, are you?”</p><p>That recovered the grin. “Old joke. But in the unlikely event that Ludd’s been pleasant enough to his good-son for their Houses to ally, which <em>would</em> put Gwyn and I on opposite sides, at least I’ll also get to kill the prick she married. Whoever he is. Fuck that prick.”</p><p>Heroically, she had allowed an obvious joke to pass in favour of not torturing him, and tried now not to imagine how prophetic his words might prove to be. <em>He may have killed himself at Ironrath. </em> </p><p>“Should I refill our skins?” asked Ryon, kneeling by the bank.</p><p>“Aye, we’ll chance on this river. It’s flowing fast, and good enough for Oatcake.” The horse was already drinking muzzle-deep a few paces down. Upstream, Beskha saw Castle Cerwyn’s grey shadow against the clammy white sky. Beyond would lie Winterfell’s corpse. The castle of the Starks who once ruled here, razed to ruins before the Boltons ever got their hands on it, and in no better state after moons in their care. <em>Ironrath will fare no better under the Whitehills. </em></p><p>Faint shouting in the distance. Oatcake’s ears flattened and she lunged back with a terrified squeal. Whirlwinds of snow at her stomping hooves. The sound of more horses followed the shouts. Beskha turned to see a party of soldiers riding towards them.</p><p>“Whitehills,” rasped Ryon, and sure enough, there was the star and mountain on their plated chests.</p><p>“Get behind me.” She drew her swords. There was no running with the river at their backs. The seven men were fanning out. They would be boxed in by the time Beskha mounted Oatcake. Their leader – not Harys, she remembered <em>that</em> one’s face – wore a similar bull horned helm to match his shining white armour. When he dismounted, two others followed suit. And one of them…</p><p>Bloodsong, Amaya’s champion, wore binds on his hands, black furs he could only have gotten from the Whitehills, and a lazily arrogant smile that seemed such a fit on his unscarred face. “Told you those tracks would be theirs,” he purred.</p><p><em>Amaya is dead.</em> The realisation hit like an icy fist. It was the only way Bloodsong could be here. This was some reward for turning his cloak and leaving his fellow pit fighters to die. “You…”</p><p><em>“Not a word!”</em> he crowed in Meereenese. The shock of hearing her mother tongue gave her just enough pause to let him speak. <em>“I told them you only have Valyrian,” </em>Bloodsong continued with a sneer. <em>“They might have executed me had I lacked a way of making myself useful, and I refuse to die in chains after knowing freedom. Play along. Pretend we’re in the pits before a crowd.”</em></p><p>It was not difficult to keep her jaw set then.</p><p>“Enough.” Bull Horns pointed an angry finger at her. “Tell this hulking bitch she was never getting far. With the Forresters and Glovers gone, our House holds sway in the wolfswood. Those trees, that land, it’s <em>ours</em>. We’ve taken it all, every Forrester on it, and we won’t stop short of finishing the job. Now I’ll know where she meant to take House Whitehill’s ward.”</p><p>“I am <em>not</em> their ward!” screamed Ryon. “Never again! And if you’ve touched anyone in my family-!”</p><p><em>“None of these whinging piss buckets have a clue where Asher is. Nor the little sister, for that matter. He was last seen being ridden out of the camp, alive. Barely so, but if even </em>I <em>couldn’t put the smirking prick in the dirt, I cannot accept that these shitheads finished the task.” </em>Bloodsong spoke with flat, bland surety, but rose his voice at the end as if posing a question.</p><p>Ryon was in floods of tears now. “What is he saying?!”</p><p>It took all the practice Beskha had in keeping a stony expression before Masters’ assessing gazes and howling crowds to maintain one as she faced the boy. Meeting his eyes, she raised a finger to her lips with a hiss before refocusing on Bloodsong. <em>“I took Ryon out the moment the fighting started. Asher can’t have gone further than we’ve come, certainly not if he was wounded. How have the Whitehills not found him, if they’ve ranged this far? What of everyone else?”</em></p><p>He turned back to the Whitehill men with a solemn, solemn expression. “She says she’s owed, crossing the Narrow Sea for a job that could’ve killed her. Fifty gold dragons’ ransom, she says, or the child’s throat is opened where we stand. Since Forrester’s too dead to pay up.”</p><p>A terrible wail from Ryon.</p><p>Bull Horns scowled. “If you get any ideas…”</p><p>“I’ll be content with vengeance.” Bloodsong jerked his head at her. “She stole from me. A slave I quite liked.”</p><p>His lip curled. “If she imagines she’ll be <em>paid</em> for a boy House Whitehill owns already, she’d best think again!" To her, "of all Asher Forrester’s creatures, you were the only one with a seat at that feast. You want a reward? We’ll allow you the gift of your piss life if you can confirm whether it truly<em> was </em>a trap.”</p><p><em>“Blah, blah, blah, I am a green boy’s piss stain and my father never loved me. Basilisk, your questions will give me away if I answer them now.” </em>Steel was pricking the artful dispassion in his voice. “<em>You’ve seen me fight. I can help protect your boy. Let’s mop the grass bloody with these Westerosi and then I will join you. I need a guide to travel through this North.”</em></p><p>“Well?” snapped Bull Horns when she did not reply at once. “What do you have to say?”</p><p>Ignoring him, her eyes met Bloodsong’s. “You’ll be no help captured.” She used the Whitehills’ moment of shock to draw her knife and throw it.</p><p>The blade caught one horse flush in the skull. Its rider crashed down with it.</p><p>Bloodsong kicked the Whitehill beside him in the shin. Even with wrists bound, he snatched the man's dagger. In a crimson flash, he was free of his bonds while the Whitehill crumbled to the ground. Then Bloodsong bolted out of sight in a flush of snow kicked up by fleeing horses. The fallen rider lay there, trampled.</p><p><em>Leaves me one on four. </em>Generous odds, by her standards.</p><p>“Ryon, <em>climb</em>!” None of their enemies had ranged weapons, nor would they be able to follow Ryon up the nearest tree.</p><p>She did not wait for the boy to obey before meeting the sword of the first man to come at her. Huge as he was, all his strikes were crude, obvious. Easily parried. She ran circles around him. They must have shoved a sword into the hands of the likeliest looking youth –</p><p>Bull Horns’s blade whistled down just past her ear. Air smacked her scarred cheek.</p><p>They surrounded her. Beskha met and countered every strike. She weaved behind her first attacker and the next stroke from Bull Horns split the large boy’s leather jerkin open in a crimson gape. The wound slanted over the snow like mouths meeting in a kiss, red smearing the path of his body’s fall.</p><p><em>Three. </em>She wheeled her swords around as she skirted backward, let them come after her. They were all intent on her again, the horses fled and Ryon safely vanished. Steel cried against steel as she blocked a hail of blows. The man in front caught one of her own with his shield and the Whitehill star fell from the sky. A crack split the mountain, a second blow caved it in. There was nothing left between him and her third attack.<em> Two.</em></p><p>They were backing her against the river. She dared not steal a glance behind her but the water seethed ever more loudly in her ears. Under her boots the snow gave more easily, wetly. <em>In there and I am lost. </em>She charged the last man-at-arms, drove him back. Her cuts came hard and fast as raining meteors, low, high, both, everywhere. The offensive was her element.</p><p>She saw the countercut coming, caught his longsword between her blades. Thrust all three forward where his gorget ended and the bared throat began. Blood splattered her face.</p><p><em>Bull Horns. </em>Beskha vaulted over the collapsed corpse, spun to meet the attack. It never came. Ryon was locked in his arms, longsword pressed against his throat.</p><p> “Now I’m the one with a ransom to demand.” The man's laugh rattled his helm. “Swords down.”</p><p>Her hands opened and they fell. “You want me to tell you the Forresters’ plans for that feast? I’ll tell you all.”</p><p>“Aye, and you’ll tell it again before my House, before a court if it pleases us. Lord Ludd doesn’t think it stops with that bitch Elissa’s little misstep.”</p><p><em>While he’s distracted, </em>she willed Ryon to remember. “There <em>was</em> a plan,” she admitted. “Asher wanted your lord dead. He ordered his wine poisoned. He called it off at the last second and that’s why his mother attacked your lord. If you checked the maester’s stores…”</p><p>Triumph lit his face like a torchlight. “<em>Yes.</em> With that to prove Forrester’s guestright was-”</p><p>Ryon drove his teeth into the man’s hand. Skin crunched. Bull Horns howled as Ryon took the chance to drive the man's dagger into his side. Cursing, he struck him. Beskha heard a crack over the blood roaring in her ears. Ryon sprawled out in the snow. Before Bull Horns could move again, her knee hit the space between his breeches. She wrenched off his helm and smashed the metal edge onto his skull.</p><p>She shoved the body away and fell beside Ryon’s. He was picking himself up, but shivering violently. Soon so was Beskha. She dropped her fur when the fight began, but cold was stealing in where racing energy left. She cupped his freshly bruised face and felt a hot seam of blood beneath her palm. Her chest compressed painfully against the roil of emotion within. “I told you to climb.”</p><p>“They nearly had you in the White Knife! I couldn’t let – if they kill you too…!”</p><p>Beskha pressed their foreheads together. “Not going anywhere.”</p><p>“But…” A hiccup seized him so violently he shuddered through his fur. “…but now Asher is dead.”</p><p>“No. The Whitehill captive, Bloodsong, told me differently. They don’t actually know whether he is or isn’t. We worked something out so we could speak without them knowing. Sorry I couldn’t tell you. Had I used the Andal – I mean, the Common Tongue, they would have slain him and gone for the two of us next.”</p><p>“You… you were bluffing as Rodrik bluffed to Ludd.”</p><p>“Aye,” she agreed through a wince. “Had a plan, though.”</p><p>“I was really scared.”</p><p>“Me too.”</p><p>“Nothing scares you.”</p><p>Her answering smile felt fragile on her lips. “Not true. Just practiced in facing it.”</p><p>“Then… I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll stick to whatever you tell me from now on,” Ryon promised. His eyes flickered to where Bloodsong had stood. “W-why did he say that… you stole a slave from him?”</p><p>Beskha flinched. “Do you think me the kind who would own one?”</p><p>“No,” he said at once. “But Meereen <em>is</em> a city in Slaver’s Bay. Did you free the person after?”</p><p>“Bloodsong was feeding the Whitehills horseshit. Neither of us have ever owned a slave, because we both spent most of our lives as such.” She let a moment pass for the weight of that to sink in. “That’s why I helped Meereen fall. That’s why it was never home for me. But I want you to know, Ryon, whatever happens to Asher, I want to help you get <em>your </em>home back. However long that may take, however hard the fight. I am here for it, and for you.”</p><p>“<em>Our</em> home,” insisted Ryon. “If we get Ironrath back together, it should be your home as well.”</p><p>A tree branch smacked and scratched across her heart. It was one hell of a promise, far beyond what the boy was in any position to give, and the many blows life dealt her had taught Beskha not to hope. To bury that dream. She did not doubt Ryon’s sincerity, though, nor that Asher’s would match it. <em>Assuming that he still lives –</em></p><p>“Let’s get it back first,” she settled on.</p><p>Ryon beamed and gripped her elbow. The gesture was one she had learned from Asher and she clasped the boy’s arm in turn, a smile growing on her own mouth. Their pact was sealed.</p><p>The boy’s eyes flew to something behind her. “Beskha…!”</p><p>Bloodsong was striding back up to them with a rattled Oatcake at his side, the reins of two of the bolted Whitehill garrons in hand. “Got your horse, and I can take one of these hairy nags. Could we trade the third animal for food and drink that isn’t shit?”</p><p>Beskha rose to her feet. “Thought you’d fucked off and left us like you did the others.”</p><p>The change in him was immediate. “As I recall,” he snarled in a voice she had never heard from him before, “you were first to bolt from Ironrath’s gates.”</p><p>“She was protecting me!” screamed Ryon, leaping between the two of them.</p><p>“Lucky you.” His eyes glided over the bodies staining the snow. <em>“How long will that last, Basilisk?”</em></p><p>“You still want that honourable death you came here to find?” she returned sharply, drawing her swords. “I can happily half oblige you. I’ll even let you have the first strike. Between that and me less fresh than you after that fight, might actually make this one interesting.”</p><p>“He’s not worth it if he’s being nasty to you, Beskha,” squeaked Ryon crossly.</p><p>Bloodsong laughed. “Asher’s brother, indeed! And don’t you want to know about him still, Basilisk? Of the others? Or perhaps Amaya was right and you never did care.”</p><p>Any other time, she would have demanded his meaning, but her mind latched onto the only word that mattered in the moment. <em>Was.</em> “She is dead, then?”</p><p>The fight left Bloodsong as suddenly as it came. “A well-aimed arrow. I’m quite sure she died quickly. Hopefully before she spotted you leaving her again.”</p><p><em>Was she</em> <em>the one I “stole” from you? </em>Beskha never imagined Amaya missing her after she left the pits, but nor had she anticipated the other woman lashing out bitterly as she did on seeing her again. No one was so angry over someone they cared nothing for. She shut her eyes against a sudden, stinging heat. Amaya had been a closed wound in her for so long, Beskha had forgotten how it used to bleed.</p><p>It was then Ryon asked. “Is it true our brother Asher might be alive?”</p><p>Bloodsong recovered himself with a tight nod. “But the fat Whitehill lord wants him dead.”</p><p>“And,” the boy’s voice trembled, “my mother and sister Talia?”</p><p>“Your sister escaped, too. Whether they recaptured her since I left or not, she is still alive. Orders for her were not to kill. Your mother is dead.”</p><p>Perhaps Ryon had cried himself empty of tears. Now he merely folded limply, soundless, against Beskha’s leg. She rested a hand on his fluffy baked-sand hair, keeping her eyes on Bloodsong. “Do you still want vengeance?”</p><p>“Against you? Don’t flatter yourself, Basilisk. You didn’t land us here. We chose to cross the sea and fight this little Westerosi war by ourselves, for ourselves, and your boy Asher did all the heavy work convincing us. It was the Whitehill men who killed Amaya.”</p><p>
  <em>He has already passed a good chance of revenging himself on me, if that was his intention. </em>
</p><p>“Amaya,” she said. “Lady Forrester. Fuck knows how many others. Every one of them deserves justice for what the Whitehills have done or are still doing. None of us are in a position to get it for them now, but we’re headed for White Harbour to bide our time.”</p><p>“I’d guessed you would. Asher knows you know it, so if we did meet him anywhere…”</p><p>“And it’s far from Highpoint, but not so far that news of Ironrath couldn’t reach us. We two also have a better chance of walking unnoticed in a port city full of tradesmen and travellers.”</p><p><em>You need that, being of Yi Ti. </em>Passing as Dornish was not possible for him; his features were too different to anything a Westerosi would find familiar. The ruse only worked for her, she was realising, because most Northmen did not bother looking beyond the colour of her skin. She spoke the Andal Tongue with a flawless accent too, if one considered <em>southron</em> here. Bloodsong could not boast as much.</p><p>“Wherever we go next,” she went on, “White Harbour’s the safest place to wait things out. We might return to Ironrath, or to Essos and hire more sellswords – the little Dragon Queen can’t hoard all the companies forever.”</p><p>“I say the Whitehills need to be<em> hurt</em> for what they did,” sniffed Ryon, looking up from the crook of her hip to pin Bloodsong with a meaningful, pink-eyed glare. “They’re bad men.” A bead of snot dribbled from his nose; he snorted it back up. “They hurt our family so they must be hurt back.”</p><p>A smile grew on Bloodsong’s lips like a blossoming wound. “I was right to come after you two.”</p>
<hr/><p>The three of them continued down the White Knife’s edge, away from the Kingsroad and too-large clusters of people. Several days later, while Bloodsong scouted ahead, Ryon twisted in the saddle to face her, struck by a new excited thought.</p><p>“In Essos… did you say there was a <em>Dragon Queen</em>?”</p><p><em>Hearing that was all</em> <em>you needed. </em>“Have you wanted to ask about her all this time, Azantīsos?”</p><p>“…Maybe.”</p><p>Beskha shook her head, but had to grin at his naked awe. “Only told you the shit parts of my time in Essos, haven’t I? Let’s not miss the fun stories too.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Stonewood is what I am calling the ambiguously-located harbour at the end of episode 5 because what the hell is effort. And since I made a guesstimate and stuck it on the headwaters of the White Knife tributary (which just about borders the wolfswood, so it would make sense as /nominally/ neutral ground for Houses Forrester and Whitehill nearby) it is now apparently a retconned riverine/inland port, not a harbour.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Gared I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for mention of past sexual abuse - it's brief, but it's there. Also, recurring allusions to blood sacrifice and necromantic possession.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Much as he did not want to admit it, Gared shared Sylvi’s unease, being in the North Grove’s dark embrace. Its trees were black in a way that ironwoods were not supposed to be – like an array of scars slashed into the skin of the night, rather than friendly ebon beams bathing the wood in dappled shadows. Their inky-blue leaves were disconcerting, too. The colour of Frostfinger’s knuckles, they were, and ten times as foul to smell as the worst frostbite when you stood close. Those leaves drank the light as the trees themselves did, sapping the glow from the faded stars.</p><p>Only the Ice Dragon remained. This far north, the constellation was so high that even the Grove’s impossibly tall trees – they dwarfed those of the wolfswood – could not reach it. Gared had to strain his neck to meet the Dragon’s Eye. Blue and bright. Like the star eyes Symeon had taken for himself in the story…</p><p>“Who’s Symeon Star-Eyes?”</p><p>Burst from his imaginings, Gared turned, smiling sheepishly. “Was I thinking aloud?”</p><p>“Yes. Did it hurt too much for you to realise?”</p><p>The jibe should not have made him grin so, matching the one Sylvi wore, but it did; a glimmer of her old fierce spirit again after losing Cotter was too good. Still, those were fighting words, so he cuffed her on the shoulder.</p><p>In seconds, they were wrestling. Snow whirled like a Kingsguard’s billowing white cloak as they weaved around each other, caking his black-clad arms in white as he tossed more at her. She howled with laughter, similarly doused, though it hardly showed against her pale grey furs, frosty white skin, the lunar shine of her hair.</p><p>After they tired themselves out, she leaned into him. He wrapped an arm around her, brought her close. It was something they had not needed to acknowledge in words, that sometimes she needed moments like this, where he took over. “Still want to hear about Star-Eyes?”</p><p>“Okay.” She wriggled closer.</p><p>“He was a hero of mine growing up. Him and Ser Arthur Dayne, although Dayne was a real person. A Kingsguard – you can guess what that is – though he was slain before I saw my first nameday.”</p><p>Gared’s birth had come in the wake of Robert’s Rebellion. While his earliest memories of the Forresters featured a family healed for the most part, he knew how dark a cloud House Branfield’s destruction had cast over Lady Elissa. <em>She was always kind to me. </em>Thinking of her now pricked him with a sharpness that went beyond the usual lance of worry. <em>I told her that Lord Gregor’s last words were that he loved her.</em> That had not been the truth – he spoke only of the North Grove – but it was still <em>a </em>truth and one worth telling, Gared had decided then.</p><p>If he ever saw the Forresters again, he would have to confess Lord Gregor’s true last words just to explain his desertion from the Night’s Watch<em>. I’d have to introduce Josera and Elsera to Lady Elissa. Her husband’s secret bastards, alive and well, after Ramsay butchered Ethan…</em></p><p>Thinking it sent tears down his cheeks. Sylvi wiped them away. “Guessing you aren’t weeping over a man you didn’t know.”</p><p>“No,” he managed to smile. <em>Did any of us know Lord Gregor, truly? </em> “No, I’m not.”</p><p>“You’ve made me start.” She rubbed her own eyes. “Keep going.”</p><p>“Well, unlike Dayne, Symeon was the stuff of myth and legend…”</p><p>It was relief for him, too, retreating to the warm haze of stories. He fell into the old tales with practiced ease, painting the North Grove in fields of verdant green, turning its trees to castles. Knights in bright armour on gallant destriers. Their swords dancing in the air, the praises of singers, the <em>strum</em> of their lutes. Just as he had told the stories to his little sister when Father let them break from their chores, until his own excitement lit Jenna’s –</p><p>No, Sylvi’s face. Gared steered Symeon and his adventures northward, as far as the Nightfort on the Wall, talked of how he became a knight despite his blindness, through sheer skill and will, not like all the highborn lordlings who had it easy (they both liked that part). How he fought with a staff that let him take two foes at once, how he replaced his eyes with sapphires from –</p><p>“The fuck are sapphires?” Sylvi blurted, breaking the spell.</p><p>Failing to suppress an appalled peal of laughter, he defined it best he could.</p><p>“Blue stone eyes…” The mirth left her. “That sounds like the wights we faced. <em>Finn.</em> Did the White Walkers really make him into…”</p><p>“Aye.” It cut him deep, remembering Finn that way. Those inhuman, arctic shards of hate where his friend’s sparkling brown eyes once were. “Suppose I always thought of the star eyes as more – a blue flame’s point, like an ironwood beacon at Ironrath.” <em>Like home.</em></p><p>Sylvi looked askance at Elsera. “Blue flame. Like what <em>she</em> uses for her spells.”</p><p>“To protect this place. Say what you will, the story that the cold couldn’t touch it turned out to true.” The winds were never high in the Grove, as if the ironwoods corralled the air, blunting the teeth of any chills it carried. Shrubs, berry bushes, even crops could grow in the village here. A stolen pocket of something like summer in the Lands of Always Winter.</p><p>“I’d sooner have us protect Ironrath.”</p><p>Josera’s growling burr startled them both. For a large man, he was incredibly light on his feet, the snow barely raising a whisper under his boots as he melted out of the shadows and padded towards them. His brow was knotted into a thick black storm above his eyes.</p><p>Sylvi pressed further into Gared’s side. If Josera noticed her unease, he ignored it. “Heard you mention the Nightfort. Is it perchance on my father’s map?”</p><p>Blinking at the odd question, Gared laid out the weathered scrap of paper. It was a vague map – deliberately so for secrecy’s sake, he knew now – he had to point to where he had worked out the Grove to be. “We’re here. It doesn’t show the Nightfort, or Castle Black, or even the Wall itself. But just here – it says <em>beneath the watchful Eye of the Ice Dragon. </em>The head points north, so following the Eye lead us here. The tail leads south.”</p><p>“Like how us Free Folk use the stars.” Sylvi squinted over her hugged knees. “How can you read that? Not the letters; that map is stupid. Must be how all you southerners draw them.”</p><p>“I’m not southron. I used this.” Gared’s throat worked as his fingers brushed it, reaching for Talia’s necklace. He opened the clasp. Set the image of the carved weirwood tree just so on the paper, as he had done with Duncan to work out the puzzle, and explained the trick to it best he could.</p><p>Lord Gregor gave Rodrik and Ethan identical pendants, his uncle said. <em>That’s three perfect copies of this same weirwood illustration, but why so much trouble – </em></p><p>“The Black Gate,” whispered Josera.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>He pointed his large paw at the pendant. “My father’s hand, and no mistake. I know why he made a weirwood’s mouth the puzzle key: same reason I asked about the Nightfort. He took us beyond the Wall through a secret gate in that castle’s underground tunnels. A long time ago now, but I’ll never forget the sight. The Black Gate, Father called it, though in truth it is weirwood white. Not like weirwood trees with faces carved onto them, mind. This gate <em>is </em>a weirwood face, writ large enough for a man to walk through its mouth, assuming it opens for him.”</p><p>Gared’s jaw slackened. “A <em>living</em> weirwood? That’s impossible!”</p><p>“Before you came here, did you think the living dead were possible?” Josera had him there. “Father said it was important we went that way, through a derelict castle long abandoned, to keep the North Grove secret. Keep <em>us </em>a secret too, most like.”</p><p>They both studied the map. It was not hard to see a connection to this Black Gate in the weirwood illustration, with its gaping maw, red to match its eyes and leaves. <em>Hear the weirwood’s whisper, </em>Lord Gregor had written above. Did that mean one specific weirwood, that truly could talk? “Maybe it was how he wanted his true…” Gared stopped himself from saying <em>trueborn children. </em>“His truest allies, like my uncle Duncan, to find the North Grove. He meant for his successors to take the same route. But what do you mean, <em>if </em>the Gate opens? It can at will?”</p><p>“On request. You approach, it asks who you are. One of you Crows – err, Night’s Watch brothers, must answer with part of his vows.”</p><p>“Why did it open for you?”</p><p>“Father had a Crow great-uncle at the time. Gwayne Forrester. He knew our purpose and met us there to see us through. He was Father’s pretext for going to the Wall, too. Far as anyone else knew, he was there to break the news in person of <em>his </em>father’s death.”</p><p>“Lord Thorren the Bold.” Fallen at the Trident, the decisive battle of Robert’s Rebellion; Baratheon himself had slain Prince Rhaegar Targaryen there. <em>He and Elsera were only children. </em>“And you want to go back still?”</p><p>Josera nodded fervently. “With you, the way is open again. We <em>should </em>take it. I know what Father said, that the North Grove must never be lost… but you’ve seen Elsera’s soldiers. If her control keeps slipping, they’ll kill us all. Stay and die, or abandon this place and live, outcome’s the same for the Grove. But if we march south, we could at least help House Forrester.”</p><p>Gared closed his hand a little tighter around his necklace and thought of Talia’s smile. To see her, his uncle, and all the others again would be so sweet…</p><p>But he could not shake the fear that Elsera was right, that the Grove was too important to abandon.</p><p>“We <em>do</em> need to talk to her about that, whatever happens next.”</p><p>Shoulders falling, Josera released a breath, nodded. “Agreed. Since you represent House Forrester, she’ll respect anything that you suggest.”</p><p>“Save his suggestions to treat Free Folk better,” said Sylvi lowly.</p><p>“You’re not tied up anymore, are you?” Josera growled, rounding on her for the first time, but his eyes flew back to Gared as the squire shifted onto ready feet.</p><p>“Nor will she be.”</p><p>A terse moment passed. Josera was first to step back. “I am sorry for your brother, truly,” he told Sylvi abruptly. “A quick, painless death was no less than what he deserved, and I am sorry my sister thought to do elsewise with his body.”</p><p>After a pause, she nodded. “Thank you. I tried to escape before because I wanted to see him. I wasn’t going to tell anyone of the Grove, I swear it.”</p><p>“Good.” With that, Josera took his leave.</p><p>The cold seemed worse in his wake. Sylvi’s shivering worsened, too. “Thanks for having my back there, Gared. But that weirwood gate he talked of… it sounded evil. Like nothing natural to the old gods.” She moved to pick up a weirwood bow, running her fingers reverently over it. “My people use this wood for many things, but we never forget that the trees it comes from are sacred.”</p><p>“I prayed with you before one for Cotter, remember? The old gods are mine as much as yours.” Much as Gared had always dreamed of knighthood, the weirwoods’ whispers were too real to deny; he could never have converted to the Seven, even for the Warrior.</p><p>“These ironwoods feel evil, too. Like the stories Cotter always told me of Hardhome.” She blinked. “That why you Crows abandoned your Nightfort? It’s cursed?”</p><p>“The Watch abandoned it because it’s old as the Wall itself, Sylvi. Good Queen Alysanne visited once and saw what an awful state it was in, so she decreed…” <em>Stop it, Lady Elissa isn’t here to impress with whatever bit of Targaryen history you gleaned off Malcolm or Mira this week.</em></p><p>“That it was cursed?”</p><p>He had to laugh. “Accurate, actually.” Putting the map away and Talia’s necklace back on, he reached for a quiver fat with arrows, slung it over his shoulder. “I’m going hunting.”</p><p>Sylvi handed him the bow, scuttling after him. “I’ll come with you.”</p><p><em>She hates being alone with those two.</em> “Didn’t you say you’ve always struggled with it?”</p><p>“No more than you do skinning hares and rabbits,” she retorted with a swat at his elbow. “You took an<em> age</em> last time. I might be shit with a bow, aye, but I’ll sort out anything you catch quick enough.”</p><p>“As long as there’s some use for you,” teased Gared, reflecting that her technique had to come from knowledge the Free Folk alone had. Among his own people in the North – <em>still the North?</em> – he was a fine skinner.</p><p>Like the North Grove itself. A nursery tale back home; Sylvi and her brother had already known of it. Cotter, too, had spoken of evading giants, mammoths, and White Walkers as if the skills were obvious. Things the Free Folk grew up knowing that the south’s best scholars would never grasp.</p><p>Gared spied a distant elk calf, motioned to Sylvi for silence as he nocked and drew. <em>The south might need to pick up all that lost knowledge to survive, and fast.</em> </p>
<hr/><p>The bounty of meat that night cheered them all. Cooked so tender on the spit that it fell from the bone in Gared’s mouth, fat running down his chin as he ate. For a moment he was back in King Robb’s camp in the Riverlands, attending Rodrik, joking with Bowen and Norren. He almost asked if he should fetch the wine – but seeing Elsera’s soldiers standing by snapped him back to the present. Never had he seen <em>them</em> eat or drink.</p><p>Sylvi asked if they should save some meat for Shadow; a visibly pleased Josera replied that the bear had fed earlier. Gared recalled aloud a conversation with Jon Snow, when his fellow Watchman talked of a Free Folk raider known as <em>Husband to Bears. </em>Josera snorted his ale so violently that both Gared and Sylvi laughed. The big man pinned them both with a look of arctic fury before spluttering into a hearty rumble himself.</p><p>Even Elsera smiled for a moment… but it fell after the silence stole back over them.</p><p>“Interesting friends you had, Gared,” she said. “One a wildling, another who walked among them.”</p><p>Sylvi’s head jerked up angrily. Gared flinched himself. “Not so strange if you knew him. Jon was a good man, even if he was…” <em>Willing to let Frostfinger take my head. </em>The betrayal stung still, but if he said it aloud, Elsera would only say that Jon learned treachery from the Free Folk.</p><p>“Bastard born?” offered Josera dryly. “We’d just heard the rumours of his birth, the <em>mistake </em>the new lord Eddard Stark made, when Father took us here. The two things together were a fine lesson…” He broke off. “No. That’s in the past. Gared, show her.”</p><p>Producing the map and pendant, he set them in the same precise positions. Elsera’s grey-green eyes flashed like white opals as she studied them. <em>Her lord father’s eyes. </em>“I see what you mean about the Black Gate. Which I assume is still unknown to the Watch?”</p><p>“Aye. Nobody’s paid the Nightfort mind for centuries. And with Mance to deal with, there’s no men being spared for its…” <em>Library. </em>The word, the realisation of what they could do with it, sent a jolt through Gared, but just then Sylvi broke in.</p><p>“Hold on! We don’t need to go through that... thing! If it’s secrecy you want, I can take us through the Gorge! It’s far from Castle Black, the best route south of the Wall to avoid any Crows, but Mance rallying his army means there'll be no Free Folk, neither. No enemies, no tricks, no bloody magic gates. We just go over the Milkwater on the Bridge of Skulls, easy.”</p><p>“See your point about it being safe with Rayder taking his forces elsewhere,” conceded Josera, “but we’d have to trust you as a guide.”</p><p>“Gared’s with you, and I care about him. He’d hurt if I steered you wrong. Trust that, if not me.”</p><p>The big man crooked a brow, nodding at her bluntness with something almost like approval.</p><p>His sister was less impressed. <em>“Mance,”</em> she growled. “I’m sure he’s the reason the Others are showing their hand now, after all this time. His invasion is giving them the perfect opportunity.”</p><p>“Should we all have politely offered ourselves up to die first?” snapped Sylvi. “Mance is taking our people south <em>because </em>the White Walkers are coming, not the other way around! If we <em>had</em> become wight fodder, that would've only made things much fucking worse for you and all those kneelers south of the Wall.”</p><p>“If we’re not to call you a wildling, you don’t call them kneelers, either,” Josera warned. “Those are people. People who’d be helpless if your precious King-Beyond-the-Wall attacked their villages!”</p><p>“People who'll be helpless anyway if we do not protect the North Grove." Elsera was stout as an iceberg. “I’m sorry,” she told her brother, sounding it. “I know you want to march south. But we both know winter is coming. Abandoning the Grove will do nothing for House Forrester then.”</p><p>By winter, she meant the White Walkers, Gared knew. They brought the cold, or else the cold brought them. “The Wall alone couldn't protect everyone lucky enough to be south of it?”</p><p>“The Wall was built to stop the Others, yes, nor can they can enter the Grove themselves – but they get around that by sending in their wights. We’re only just starting to understand the power this place holds, Gared. What if the Others harnessed that power? From the attacks we’ve had, there’s something here they want very badly. If that something could help them bring about a second Long Night…” She shook her head. “I don’t mean to find out.”</p><p>“Or perhaps there’s no method to the madness, they just want to snuff out all life and warmth wherever they find it,” huffed Josera. “They are the winter. That is their nature.”</p><p><em>She has not shown him what she showed me, </em>realised Gared, gut sinking. He had not told Sylvi either, trying to protect her from the truth. Sharing it could tear their group apart for good. <em>As surely as keeping it hidden eventually will.</em></p><p>“Let’s say you’re right, Elsera,” he said. “The Others want something from the North Grove that we cannot let them take. Is your bloodmagic truly the way to protect it?”</p><p>“Bloodmagic?” echoed Sylvi in a horrified gasp. Beside her, Josera tensed.</p><p>Gared pressed on. “You told me to cut my dying brother’s beating heart out to that end – Cotter <em>was </em>that to me, whatever you think of the Free Folk. When I refused, one of your soldiers attacked you. The second time that’s happened, apparently, in a short while. It’s as your brother said, you’re losing more control by the day.”</p><p>“Josera, you had no right,” Elsera muttered bitterly.</p><p>“I do if you’re hurting yourself this badly to keep them!” he fired back. “I didn’t want to believe you’d taken it this far, but if you have, staying here and blindly hoping your magic holds out for the winter isn’t an option!”</p><p>“Well, you’ve seen what happens when my soldiers break from it. The alternative is killing them all, for good this time, but that leaves only us four – a piss-poor army against any foe. As for it being wrong… the dead don’t care what’s done with their bodies, and this power could save the <em>living</em>.”</p><p>“They do care,” Gared insisted with quiet conviction, remembering the desperation of that one soldier who lunged for Elsera back in the hollow tree. A woman wrenching free of invisible chains.</p><p>“Witch. Necromancer.” There was cold fury in Sylvi’s voice. “What you’re doing is vile. <em>Evil</em>.”</p><p>“No. My magic is quite natural, drawn from the Grove’s ironwoods. Different as they may look and be to weirwoods, in truth the two balance each other. In older times, the First Men and Children of the Forest would sacrifice an individual’s body to a weirwood, to preserve their spirit inside. Ironwoods, on the other hand, transpose my spirit into my soldiers, to keep their bodies walking.”</p><p>The world jarred. Gared rubbed his temple, remembering how the weirwoods with their carved faces frozen in screams frightened him as a lad. He did not want to believe Elsera. But he knew from Ethan’s poking through Malcolm’s histories of the Reach, religion, and corn kings, that worship of the old gods might truly once have been that bloody. Some did say, too, that the Children had spied on the First Men through the weirwoods’ eyes, when those two peoples still warred. <em>That supports people going into the trees as she says, but… no. No. </em>He felt sick.</p><p>Sylvi was not to be silenced. “That makes you no better than the damned White Walkers!”</p><p>“Others, White Walkers of the wood. By any name, they’re turning every corpse they make into a wight, and this might be the only way to even the odds.” Elsera’s lips pursed. “Agree with me or don’t, the Others would have no qualms about using the Grove’s power to its full potential. Tell me you understand that whatever happens, we cannot risk leaving this place unprotected!”</p><p>A roar ripped through the trees. No wind strong enough to carry it; the sound was loud enough on its own. Gared recognised it by now, but lightning bolts of alarm shot through him nonetheless.</p><p>“Shadow.”</p><p>Josera shifted onto his knees, head tilting back. Familiar white mist rushed over his eyes. He froze, hardly even seeming to breathe. Echoes of Shadow’s growls and barks rang through the air, along with the sound of running feet.</p><p>Sylvi lowered her spear. Just like that, the argument was over. It would mean their lives if they were not united through a wight attack.</p><p>Gared blinked at Elsera. “Is he fighting?”</p><p>“No.” Her gaze was trained on her brother. “Or nothing that he cannot handle alone. We worked out signals for his patrols. If he has Shadow roar again, that’s my cue to send in my soldiers.”</p><p>Josera’s eyelids fluttered rapidly, as if struck by a dust cloud. When they settled, his pupils were back. He was in his body again. “No wights, just a group of women. None of them armed, all terrified of the bear. They were sensible enough not to flee, at first, but then one of the younger ones broke and they all ran.”</p><p>“Still did better than most,” Elsera huffed, before turning to Gared and Sylvi with an abashed expression. “No offence.”</p><p>Sylvi met her with a spiteful smile. “As opposed to everything else that comes out your mouth?”</p><p>“You’re only chasing them away from the Grove, right?” frowned Gared.</p><p>“Obviously! I just meant, they don’t know Shadow has someone skinchanging him, only fools would think they could outrun a wild bear…”</p><p>“<em>No offence, </em>she says, Gared…”</p><p>“Didn’t chase these ones,” interrupted Josera. “Thought it better to steer them towards us, the way you two and Cotter came here.” His eyes grew more troubled along with his voice.</p><p>“They too, apparently, were seeking out the North Grove.”</p>
<hr/><p>The women formed a small cluster in the snowy clearing. Elsera had called her soldiers to their side; they circled their prisoners in a tight ring with their spears on display, though as yet no weapons were pointed at anyone’s neck. Shadow moved beside Josera. Tall as he was, he scarcely reached his snow bear’s shoulder.</p><p>All the women were dull brown of clothing and hair, save one who was greying, the lines on her thinned face giving her an angular, detached expression. She levelled that look at Elsera, her mouth set in a resolute line.</p><p>“From one prison to another, is it? Get on with it, then. There’s naught you can do to us we’ve not already suffered ten times or more.”</p><p>Elsera stepped back, uncertain at the easy surrender.</p><p>Gared tried to sound soothing. “We don’t want to hurt any of you in any way, we just…”</p><p>“Just what, Crow?” one snapped. “If you’re this far north, and among Free Folk besides, you’re another deserter – maybe with them mutineers. If you’re anything like your sworn brothers, your words are less than shit.” She spat.</p><p>Elsera's lip curled. “What do you mean, deserters from the Watch? Has that anything to do with Mance Rayder?”</p><p>“Don’t know, don’t care what the King-beyond-the-Wall’s doing. He never came when we needed him. The loyal Crows, whose hides he’s gone to skin, did more for us. Not that that’s saying much.”</p><p>“They came to our homestead for the mutineers, but they left once they were done!” cried a small girl behind her. “We burned it down and left because we didn’t want to stay there. No Crows followed us! I swear it!”</p><p>“Craster’s keep,” Gared realised aloud. When all their prisoners collectively flinched, he knew. From Sylvi’s recoil, she recognised the name too. But Elsera and Josera's faces were blank. “Elsera, could you have them back off some?”</p><p>She barked a command in the Old Tongue. The soldiers withdrew, weapons lowered, but her expression remained hard as her own ironwood armour as she spoke to the daughter-wives. “We want to know how you learned of this place and why you came. We have been charged with protecting it and will do so as far as needs demand.”</p><p>The casual display of her power left words stranded in their prisoners’ throats.</p><p>“Needs aren’t bloody demanding when you already have them at your mercy!” Sylvi rushed between Elsera and the women. “Stop this. Let them go. They’ve got nothing to do with Mance.”</p><p>“How would you know?” Josera’s snarl spurred a distressed buff from Shadow. “I have <em>tried</em> with you–”</p><p>“Let her talk to them!” Gared said it to interrupt him, to stall, but said aloud, he realised the idea had merit. “Free Folk have ways of talking to each other. Coming to understandings. She’ll be able to get more out of them and faster.”</p><p>Sylvi caught on, gave him a nod. “Aye, it’s true. You need me.”</p><p>They did not agree without precautions. Elsera’s army were instructed to guard the cave leading out of the Grove to bar any attempts to flee. Josera warged Shadow again; with the bear’s superior hearing, he could follow Sylvi’s questioning the daughter-wives from afar. If they strayed from the issue at hand, Elsera could prod them for progress. Should any plans to steal the Grove’s prized ironwood become apparent, Shadow was ready to charge.</p><p>Gared, meanwhile, relayed all that he had learned at the Wall of the wildling Craster, his so-called “keep”, the Watch’s mutiny there and Jon’s mission to hunt the offenders down. Finally, he described the plight of Craster’s daughters, how the man had made wives of them.</p><p>“As if the treachery and deceit of wildlings was not enough,” remarked Elsera, when he finished. “Now they are perverse lechers, too.”</p><p>That snapped Josera back to their own conversation. “We knew that from Varamyr. And speaking of…” He winced. “Sister, what Sylvi said earlier of us being no better than the Others. I never minded the idea of turning their own damned weapon against them. Nor would I lose sleep turning that weapon on those who would hurt our family at Ironrath.”</p><p>“I know what you’re thinking. We seem little better than Varamyr either. But he uses his gifts for power and pleasure – we use ours to protect those who would not thank nor accept us. That’s the difference.”</p><p>The name stirred Gared’s memory. “You don’t mean Varamyr Six-Skins, the skinchanger lord?”</p><p>“Your friend Jon Snow mentioned him, did he?” Josera rolled his eyes. “They must both have been in Mance Rayder’s army. You should tell Sylvi to dismount her high horse. Six-Skins is a wildling neck-deep in far fouler arts than we, yet the King-Beyond-the-Wall she loves so well wasn’t above accepting him for his own ends. What do you make of that, Gared?”</p><p>“I think you’re both quick to bristle at hypocrisy,” he replied evenly, “so it’s strange you’re equally quick to call all Free Folk treacherous by nature just because of a few you’ve met. When you hate that, south of the Wall, the same is said of all bastards.”</p><p>Sylvi reappeared before either of them could reply.</p><p>“Craster never kept his sons along with his daughters,” she began, voice tight. “He – he exposed them as sacrifices to the White Walkers. The cold gods, he called them. It’s how he kept the girls with him so long, they thought they needed him to protect them. Until the Crows came and killed him. That freed his daughters, but none of them trusted Mance or the Crows enough to join either side, so they all went their own ways. Some had kept a few stories from the outside world alive - including one about the North Grove and its power to ward off the White Walkers. They wanted to take their chances with it.”</p><p>Gared’s throat closed as he listened, wool catching in his nails as he clenched his gloved fists. “That monster.” <em>If the Night’s Watch ever broke bread with such, they’ve betrayed far more than just the likes of me. </em>Jon, at least, never spared Craster any patience.</p><p>Josera nodded. "Makes sense. The Others rely on exposed children. They can turn any corpse into a wight, but creating one of their own? They need abandoned babes for that.”</p><p>“And how did these isolated daughter-wives know where to find this place?” Elsera asked.</p><p>Sylvi glared before answering. “They said another deserted Crow joined them and led them up here, but he vanished just before the bear came.”</p><p>“Impossible.” Josera frowned. “Shadow and I would have picked up his scent, unless…”</p><p>“Unless?” prompted Gared, watching his face.</p><p>“Unless he’s some kind of wight himself. The dead have no smell. Perhaps this man was brought back the way you brought your soldiers back, Elsera, but free of any bonds…”</p><p>“Like those soldiers you enslaved are going to be,” agreed Sylvi flatly. “Free when you finally let them fucking rest for good, or when they kill you. It’s only a matter of time, isn’t it? You clearly don’t have the energy to keep your bloodmagic alive anymore, and I, for one, won’t be mourning it.”</p><p>Perhaps the energy to deny it had gone as well, or Elsera no longer saw the point in doing so. “It’s lasted so long,” she whispered. “I thought I could count on it. Why now?”</p><p>Josera put an arm around her. “So, that’s it?” His voice was thick. “March south or remain here, we have no army to stand against our enemies?”</p><p><em>This is because I gave Cotter the nightshade for a peaceful death, </em>Gared realised grimly. Maybe that ritual could have fuelled Elsera's magic long enough to see the Grove through the winter. Maybe not. But there was no going back and changing his choice, nor would he if he could. They had to go forward with what they had.</p><p>“Say we did go to the Black Gate." All heads swivelled round to look at him. “We might find a third option at the Nightfort. It was the Watch’s original seat. If any place holds knowledge of the North Grove that we could use, it’s the Nightfort archives. We might learn for certain whether the Grove or Ironrath is a bigger priority for us to protect, army at our backs or no.”</p><p>Josera scratched his bristles in thought. “Ironrath is also straight on through the Northern Mountains from the Black Gate, I recall. It would not be a long journey if we <em>did </em>decide to continue south from there.”</p><p>Gared nodded. “We could make it shorter still if we brought one of Craster’s wives with us, too. I remember Jon saying that the man’s keep is – <em>was</em> – directly north of the Nightfort. With a guide straight to Craster’s, the Ice Dragon would be direction enough the rest of the way. Then we wouldn’t need leave the Grove unprotected for long.”</p><p>“You know I’m reluctant to leave it unprotected at all,” sighed Elsera. “But you’re right that we can no longer simply linger here. If you think there’s a<em> chance </em>that this library could help…”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>“It’s decided, then.” Elsera tiredly rubbed her nose; her gloved knuckle came away with a smear of blood. “I ought to rest awhile. Let me know what the wives say to this, Sylvi – I trust you can use your <em>Free Folk ways </em>to move them with the right words again.”</p><p>The girl did not answer, even to Elsera’s use of her name and the term <em>Free Folk</em> for the first time.</p><p>“Sylvi?” Gared tried. He reached to brush at a white drift of her hair. She flinched away.</p><p>“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have brought  the Nightfort up if I didn’t think that we really might need that library.” He squatted down to her eye level. “It has to be me who opens that Gate. I don’t know if those two are even lettered – I’ll have to read for them if not, my uncle taught me writing enough to get by. But... if we do ever march south, we <em>could </em>go through your Gorge, meet Elsera and Josera on the other side. Anything to make it easier. Alright?”</p><p>Finally, she faced him. “Thanks. I do appreciate it. But it’s not just that.”</p><p>“Talk to me. Let’s not be like those two, hiding important things until someone else forces it out.”</p><p>“Does that mean you see me as a sister?” Her voice cracked slightly.</p><p>“Do… do you mind? I told you I lost mine. Jenna was her name. She was only eight.” Stinging pain bit the corners of Gared’s eyes and he wished he could ram his sword through Britt’s belly all over again, and again, a thousand times again would never be enough. “I know you don’t think much of us Crows or our customs, but I meant what I said about Cotter, too. He was my brother.”</p><p>“Brother,” she echoed, tasting the word. He raised his arm in offer of an embrace, but she scrambled away from him. Through staggered breaths, she managed, “I have to know. When Josera said <em>she</em> thought to do elsewise with Cotter’s body…”</p><p>“No,” Gared said at once.</p><p>“What?” Tears hung from her lashes like shards. <em>“What did she want with him?!”</em></p><p>“Nothing I let her take. I refused to let her go through with that damn ritual, Sylvi! I gave him the nightshade, like I promised you. He went without pain.”</p><p>“He was still dressed like a Crow when she treated him. Would she have bothered if she'd known he was Free Folk? Can you look me in the eye and say she bothered at <em>all</em>?”</p><p>“We knew before we reached the Grove that Cotter’s wound was fatal,” Gared reminded her. “There was nothing Elsera could have done save give him an easy death, and that’s just what I insisted on.”</p><p>“But you’ll still defend her. You’ll still go out of your way to see her and her brother back at your Ironrath. And what kind of place is it? Not one for me.” Her chin was wobbling. “Not if your Lord Gregor ruled it. Because if her magic is why he wanted to protect this place, then he’s worse than both his bastards put together.”</p><p>Before he could speak, she tore away from him, ran to the village, back to Craster’s daughter-wives.</p><p>Half-sensible, Gared staggered all the way back to the weirwood tree and fell before it, the same one he and Sylvi prayed to now. Its mouth was curled open in what resembled a mocking laugh. The leaves’ whispers in the wind were a roar in his ears.</p><p><em>“You old gods,” </em>he prayed. <em>“I’ve given up so much for this bloody Grove. If I’ve killed and stolen and broken oaths along the way, it’s because I had to. Don’t take the family I’ve made as well as the one I was born to. Not Sylvi, not House Forrester. No sin deserves as much punishment as you’ve given us.”</em></p><p>Up above, the Eye of the Ice Dragon burned cold fire.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Malcolm I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A good part of this chapter covers events in the game and therefore comprise a flashback; chronologically speaking, by the end it is more or less up to date with the other POVs.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Malcolm had been glad to leave the Northern climate behind, yet now he would give worlds to pack himself in a mound of summer snow.</p><p>Drogon’s breath had sloughed off a chunk of his jerkin and sleeve, the skin beneath unprotected. It was furious red and swollen with blood blisters, some already weeping fluid. He had set his teeth so hard against the pain that his gums and jaw hummed still. His closed fist around Scythe’s hilt felt raw. <em>Asher must not hear me whimper</em>. Even if leasing such a sound would be a fiercer chastening for his nephew than any rebuke. He drew solace from repeating to himself a truth learned under the Mad King: the worst burns never made themselves felt.</p><p>Still, Malcolm had muttered half a hundred prayers for strength to the Smith before his burns were treated. His designated tent flap parted with a rough whisper as he was led inside. Sand and dirt gave way to patterned carpets underfoot, perfumes overrode the smells of cookfires, camels, and cluttering freedmen outside. A girl of similar age to Mira, perhaps a little older, guided him wordlessly to a bench while a tall woman arranged salves at a table. Both were dressed in deep cobalt from head to toe with azure veils weaving around their arms, faces, and necks.</p><p><em>Blue Graces. </em>He knew it from inhaling all those histories of Slaver’s Bay during the voyage to Yunkai. The Ghiscari religion was comprised of priestesses called Graces; each performed a different role in their city’s temple signified by the colour of their garb. Blue Graces were healers, as well-trained as any maester of the Citadel with a silver link. <em>I’m in good hands, at least.</em></p><p>They talked as they worked, the girl sometimes pausing to reassure him without expecting a response, the harsh rasp of her Ghiscari accent at odds with the light and friendly tone she adopted. A ghost of the old dead tongue in the Valyrian of Slaver’s Bay. At first, Malcolm found the strange dialect unfathomable. But after listening, and getting some relief from the pain as the elder Grace applied soothing lotions of myrrh, honey, and wine, he realised he could understand. Astapor and Yunkai – <em>they must be from one of the two</em> – had once been tightly controlled by Valyria, after all. Their tongues never deviated much from the High Valyrian spoken in the Freehold’s capital.</p><p>“My thanks,” he said, in that language.</p><p>Both paused. A bright grin lit the younger Grace’s face. “You’re welcome! Apologies that you had to wait so long before getting it examined. Are you feeling better?”</p><p>“A little.” He gestured at Scythe’s pommel at his hip, cast in the shape of a rearing dragon. “It will be some time before I’m ready to be reacquainted with the beasts, though.”</p><p>She chuckled. “You were brave. I think I like you much better than the other Westerosi, one of those two warriors that the queen ordered into the Meereen mission. The way he was, ah, staring…”</p><p>He and Asher had not been in this camp for ten bloody minutes. “Whatever offence my nephew has given, I am very sorry, his fooling around is entirely harmless…”</p><p>But she only laughed more. “The handsome one? He fools around? Him I definitely like better, then! No, I speak of the old knight and the bear warrior – the latter’s eyes are only for the queen herself, not that it pleases…”</p><p>“I see nothing funny about it,” interrupted her senior Grace sharply, narrowing her eyes at Malcolm. “Little I have seen of your countrymen speaks well of them, Westerosi. I was always told that your country was full of barbarians. It is not a point on which I would like to be proved right.”</p><p>“Raqhaga! There is something in this world you would not chafe to be wrong about? Say it is not so.”</p><p>“Bandages, Seqazdi,” came Raqhaga’s brusque reply. Seqazdi did not drop her smile but she obliged her fellow Grace, enswathing Malcolm’s arm and shoulder in silken binds and placing the salves and lotions. Still the wound burned, but much of the anger had been taken out of it by their attentions. He thanked them again.</p><p>“Making a dead hostage of you would not help ensure your nephew’s behaviour,” returned Raqhaga dryly. “He did not lie about Drogon. I’ll give you that. I saw many burns like this when the Mother of Dragons took Astapor. You are luckier than most Good Masters.”</p><p>“Whom you treated?” Malcolm asked, his focus sharpening. What must Raqhaga think of Daenerys, herself Westerosi by birth and a Valyrian, who sacked their city besides? She and Seqazdi like as not came from noble families themselves, as Graces. Would have had slaves to tutor them, bear their litters, fan them, feed them, and wash them all their lives. How they liked walking among freedmen was hard to imagine.</p><p>Raqhaga regarded him a moment. “No. But many of them came to our Temple to hide, leaving Astapor’s defence to their slaves. A brilliant notion, against an invader come to free slaves.”</p><p>“There were children among those families, as well as the sick we were treating when the sack began,” added Seqazdi, growing serious as she spoke. “The queen refused to attack the Temple with them inside. Instead, she brought the Unsullied to our door and demanded we surrender everyone holding a whip. Our Green Grace did so and the rest of us emerged unharmed after.”</p><p>“That does not explain why you are in her camp now. You Graces must have little reason to love her.”</p><p>This time Seqazdi was taken aback while Raqhaga laughed. The sound was a roll of thunder in her throat. “You’re not as helplessly lost here as you look. Fear not, the queen is quite safe. We had our own reasons for leaving Astapor behind.” As she spoke, she laid a hand on her junior Grace’s shoulder.</p><p>Seqazdi recovered herself under the touch. “I think the queen will like you better than those others I mentioned, too,” she told him, her grin rekindling. “You, your nephew, that one-eyed sellsword… so many Westerosi are come to lay their swords down for her! Will you all do so when she returns, as her handmaidens say? Do you all want her back?”</p><p>It was a long time since Malcolm had had a chance to talk honestly of the Targaryens. “Mine own House would have, though I cannot speak for most of Westeros. We do not see ourselves as all one people – and one major difference is our sentiments about the queen’s family.”</p><p>He and Elissa had barely escaped Springhearth’s destruction with their lives. It was a godsend she had wed Gregor some years prior; Ironrath was their only refuge. His good-brother had been nothing but accommodating, but Malcolm never felt he escaped the severe, wary eye of other Northern lords. Many were grieving their own losses at the loyalists’ hands, after all, the new Lord Stark chief among them.</p><p>Teaching his sister’s children – and themselves – that Robert was the true king had been the hardest of all things about the North to adjust to, worse than the winter and the food and the grim people.</p><p>After the Graces left, Malcolm sat alone, wondering if more Forrester children would grow up being taught to love the butchers of their kin, those named <em>Whitehill </em>as well as those called <em>Baratheon.</em></p>
<hr/><p>He was replacing his bandages as per Raqhaga’s instructions when Daenerys Stormborn found him, the tent flap fluttering like a dragon’s wings behind her as she entered. When her eyes fell on his arm, she froze. It gave Malcolm a few seconds to collect himself. “Your Grace…!”</p><p>“Do not rise, my lord. You must be mindful of those burns, and I sit no throne yet. In fact, if I am imposing…?”</p><p>“Of course not, Your Grace. Pray give me a moment and I can better receive you.”</p><p>She nodded. Once his bandages were safely in place, Daenerys returned with two Unsullied guards and a servant who set down a decanter of persimmon wine, two goblets, and a small plate of cheese, sliced figs, nuts, and olives. All were gorgeous on Malcolm’s tongue. Welcome as the trade up from Northern fare had been, this was his first time properly savouring any food since docking in Yunkai; before, he had been too worried for Asher. Now he could relax. Sat just opposite him in his own tent, her scaled dress and dragon claw necklace traded for a robe of sky-blue samite, Daenerys looked less the inaccessible conqueror and more a young girl with whom anyone could talk and laugh. “Your nephew’s report of seeing my Drogon was true.” Her purple eyes were troubled. “Please forgive my earlier rancour.”</p><p>“There is nothing to forgive, Your Grace.”</p><p>“You are generous and wrong to say so. I have you and him to thank for a woman who once lived in Meereen joining my forces. None among my men can boast such familiarity with the city.”</p><p>“I hope she proves helpful.” Which was more than Beskha had deigned to be so far, but he smothered his doubts about the sellsword with a smile. “Apologies that she and Asher were so, ah…”</p><p>“Bold?” supplied the queen lightly, her own smile crooked. “Asher was sincere, at the least. A change from those who came before to bring me tales of Drogon’s whereabouts. I assumed that was all you came for, and a mother tires of pretty lies and money-grubbing when she is sick with fear for her child. That is what my dragons are to me, my lord. My children.”</p><p>Malcolm had heard the stories already, how Daenerys brought her dragons into the world from the ashes of a funeral pyre, but now was not the time to feed that spark of curiosity.</p><p>“A mother’s love brought me here, too,” he said. “My sister’s, for her wayward son. For her children still at home facing grave danger from tyrants who would see their House destroyed. If our concerns seem selfish against your own, Your Grace, it is fear for our family’s lives that makes them so.”</p><p>Her silver brows drew together. “That grieves me to hear. You have my sympathies.”</p><p><em>And your sellswords? </em>He bit the thought back. It had to come from her.</p><p>“Forgive me,” began Daenerys, “for I am a young girl and my education was not as thorough as I would have wished, but there are things I do not know of my country. Croft tells me that Asher is an exile, but I thought that men convicted of very grave crimes in Westeros are sent to the Wall, if not killed? The only exception I know of is a knight who until recently was in mine own service – and his deeds were dire enough that Lord Stark himself wanted his head.”</p><p>“Ser Jorah Mormont!” Malcolm gasped. That must have been who Seqazdi meant by <em>bear warrior.</em></p><p>“You know him?”</p><p>This could be dangerous territory. “Asher’s accent may have given him away as a Northman, and I have lived there with that side of my family myself for many years. When Mormont exiled himself to flee Ned Stark’s sentence, we all heard about it.”</p><p>Jorah’s wife Lady Lynesse had flown with him. Oftentimes before, she had guested Elissa and Malcolm himself at Mormont Keep. Each time, Lynesse had pressed for their experiences as fellow Reachermen come North: did they find it as bleak and lonely as she? Was it normal? Elissa was resolute in never refusing her – Lynesse was a Hightower by birth, and his sister was nothing if not canny with her connections – but they had both found her prodding objectionable.</p><p><em>Do we not wish for our old lives back indeed? </em>Elissa snarled in aside to him once, <em>as if they were not ripped away from us. She knows. Bloody cow. </em>Malcolm remembered wondering if Lynesse’s woes of having left the Reach to marry a Northerner she knew only from a tourney triumph perhaps landed too closely – it was how Elissa met Gregor – but he had known better than to ask.</p><p>“Then you know what crime brought him here.” Sadness flashed across Daenerys’s face. “Slaver he might have been once, but when he joined me in my mission to end the practice, I had hoped him a man trying to redeem himself. I am sorry I was wrong.” She sipped her wine and watched him over the goblet’s edge. “What crime was so dire that your nephew was shipped across the Narrow Sea, Malcolm? I must know who I just enlisted.”</p><p>At first, he meant to tell only as much as would assure her that Asher was not violent to the point of dangerousness, nor immoral beyond redemption, but the old injustice made him angry to recall and soon he was telling the queen everything. The Forrester-Whitehill blood feud, Asher stealing away with Ludd’s daughter. How Ludd’s first response had been a rape charge, only to withdraw it on realising that the worst he could accomplish was forcing Asher to take the black. Joining the Night’s Watch was always a way out, even for the guilty.</p><p>From the Wall, Asher could have kept close contact with his family. With Gwyn. That would not serve for Ludd, so he issued an ultimatum: Asher’s exile to the other side of the world, or war. Gregor, who had worked so hard for the then truce, chose the former.</p><p>“I regret to add, Your Grace, that I could do nothing to stop the Whitehills myself, being the last of mine own line. A sorry thing for a man to admit, but after the Usurper’s rebellion, Asher’s fate as an exile could well have been mine own.” <em>Assuming I kept my head.</em> “House Branfield will die with me.”</p><p>It was Daenerys’s turn to startle in recognition. “House Branfield of Springhearth, near Ashford. My brother Viserys spoke of your family as one of the few that remained loyal to mine until the end.”</p><p>“To the bitter end,” he agreed quietly.</p><p>The queen’s mouth pressed into a thin white line, her eyes growing wide and wet. Much like the way Talia had looked at poor Gared Tuttle on learning of his family’s demise, though Daenerys’s face also held a certain understanding.</p><p>“We share a tragedy, my lord. The Usurper made me last of my line too but for Viserys, and I think he died somewhere out on the run with me in the Free Cities, long before his actual last breath.”</p><p>The Mother of Dragons laid a hand on his. He was surprised, but took it and squeezed.</p><p>“What your family suffered was the foulest injustice. The slaves of Meereen are suffering, too. When first I was hailed a queen, I swore I would answer injustice with justice wherever I found it. The Good and Wise Masters of Astapor and Yunkai learned that. The Great Masters of Meereen and, in time, the Usurper’s dogs will learn it as well.” Daenerys paused. “You paint a volatile picture of your nephew. A man who follows his heart above his head. If that heart is in the right place…”</p><p>“It is.” He had never doubted that. <em>That was not him, leaving me in the cave, he was not himself.</em></p><p>“Then he might be a great help in the fight to come. Time will tell. And now I must go and see to the preparations myself, before the day is out.”</p><p>Malcolm rose with her; before releasing her hand, he pressed it to his lips in deference. Recalling Seqazdi’s hints that Daenerys meant to reclaim the Iron Throne, he only hesitated a moment before adding, “my queen.”</p><p><em>I’m breaking no oaths. I bent the knee to the Young Wolf like the rest, but now he is dead, and no Bolton or Lannister bothered to bid me do the same for them. </em>Here was someone worthier than all of them anyway.</p><p>“I am glad I came to you, Malcolm,” Daenerys smiled. “We will speak again before Meereen falls.”</p>
<hr/><p>By the time Asher left to join Croft’s group in the siege, Malcolm was familiar enough with Daenerys to be certain that she would not harm him. The queen warned him, though, not to give Asher reason to think the same.<em> She needs him obedient still. </em>“Focus on the mission,” was all he was able to say in parting. “Your family needs you.”</p><p>Asher dragged his sharp green gaze away from Red Maggot and Talhono – the two Unsullied charged with guarding Malcolm – and huffed out a relieved noise. “You’re my family, too!”</p><p>“And I couldn’t be prouder of you. Good luck, my boy.” <em>Son I never had.</em></p><p>Perhaps he had fed Asher too much reassurance, made him too complacent. He let Beskha kill a Master on their mission, in defiance of Daenerys’s instructions. “Justice belongs to the people of Meereen,” the queen had insisted, fierce and angry.</p><p>Asher spared her wrath by revealing that Beskha in fact <em>was </em>such, a former slave of the man she killed, but the damage was done. Daenerys’s reward for their service in taking Meereen almost bloodlessly had been a chest of gold… but not the promised soldiers. Privately, Malcolm had thanked the gods for the offer to continue serving her in Essos. The flame of a Targaryen alliance had been lit, but it needed nurture, he thought, and by a more careful hand than his nephew’s. He told Asher as much at the docks, though not in so many words.</p><p>“Iron from Ice,” he said in farewell.</p><p>Asher paused mid-step on the ramp up the ship bound for Ironrath, a glimmer of wildfire in his eyes. “How about Fire and Blood, uncle? That’s what the Targaryens say.”</p>
<hr/><p>“I fear it was my fault and Jorah’s that the queen was so harsh when first you met her.” Ser Barristan Selmy – <em>Barristan the Bold himself! – </em>walked in step with Malcolm as they followed Missandei, a Naathi scribe, advisor, and translator – up marble stairs to the queen’s new audience hall, on the thirty-second level of Meereen’s Great Pyramid. The old knight gave him a rueful smile through a thick white beard. “I lied about my name when first I came to her, and then we discovered Mormont’s treachery. She was still reeling when Croft announced you and your nephew, I think.”</p><p>That explained her anger at liars, specifically. “She trusted you and Mormont to sneak into Meereen through the sewers and release the slaves within.”</p><p>“Along with the Unsullied, yes. Her Grace admitted later that she gave us a more dangerous area to cover than they because she had hoped that we would die. In Mormont’s case, that would have been a kindness.”</p><p>Malcolm stopped short. “But the queen must recognise what a worthy knight she has in you!”</p><p>“Would I be here now if she had not?” Barristan chuckled. “Training Unsullied boys? Learning Valyrian from a teacher as talented as the one I have?” He smiled at Missandei when he came to the last.</p><p>“You are nearly as good a student as Grey Worm is of the Common Tongue, and I have always loved languages,” she replied modestly, though she beamed at his words. Turning to Malcolm, she asked, “I hear you are fluent yourself, my lord? Is that common among lords in Westeros?”</p><p>“It is an esteemed skill, to be sure, but not exactly commonplace. My lord father wanted my siblings and I to speak High Valyrian and so further elevate our family in the Targaryen court. Since he and our mother had it already, he often insisted on day-to-day conversations in that tongue, never letting them proceed until we could respond without erring.”</p><p>“Strict,” laughed Barristan. “That does sound like Lord Aenar. Oh yes,” he added when Malcolm blinked, “I met him a few times at court. The man deserved a better fate. Robert spared many loyalists’ lives, mine own included, but Springhearth… that was a foul mark on his name.”</p><p>“Loyalists to <em>Aerys,</em>” corrected Malcolm. “The mercy he gave Rhaegar’s friends was a different sort.”</p><p>The Usurper never forgave the prince his betrothed’s abduction, that was the way of it. The tidings at Springhearth had held that Lyanna Stark went with Rhaegar willingly – an explanation for their disappearance soon to materialise – but in the North, all believed that their beloved Ned’s little sister had been captured and defiled. Whichever version was true, Robert had revenged himself in part on former allies of Rhaegar, where the Mad King’s creatures got off lightly.</p><p>Barristan remained quiet for the rest of the journey and Malcolm feared he had offended him, but just before they entered, he asked abruptly, “do you think that is why Lord Stark was never blamed for Ser Arthur? Much less his sister Ashara…” His voice wavered on her name. “House Dayne kept closely with Prince Rhaegar, yes, but I did not think that the reason for their losses.”</p><p>“Ned Stark was Robert's friend, ser, as Ser Arthur was Prince Rhaegar’s. That’s your explanation.”</p><p>The doors opened and they went through the audience hall to the terrace outside. Despite the grandeur of the high-ceilinged room and its purple pillars, Daenerys had swapped the Meereenese carved and gilded wooden throne fashioned in the shape of a squatting harpy in favour of a plain ebon bench. Her gardens were simple too, flowers and lemon trees, against the staggering view of Meereen that their location offered; dry brown hills, the Temple of the Graces, lesser pyramids.</p><p>On other days, Daenerys might have eagerly indulged their talk of the past, Springhearth, and the brother she had never known in Rhaegar, as had happened many times before. But since Asher’s departure, being Queen of Meereen had burdened her with more pressing cares. Astapor had overthrown the council she left there and Yunkai threatened war if they could not resume slavery. Within Meereen’s own walls too, there had been night attacks by the insurgent Sons of the Harpy.</p><p>Weariness cast dark smears under the queen’s amethyst eyes now. When she spoke, she grew wearier still. “New Ghis has declared war.”</p><p>It was no shock, not when New Ghis profited as much from slavery as her sister cities once had, but the news still twisted Malcolm’s belly in knots. “The envoy said there would be peace if you left.”</p><p>“A slaver’s peace,” she growled, before softening. “I understand that you are anxious for me to return to Westeros, Malcolm. As am I. It is the home I never had a chance to know. But I cannot let Meereen fall back into chains as Astapor and Yunkai have, or I am no queen worthy of the name. Before I sail west, I would bring freedom to Slaver’s Bay.”</p><p>Missandei reached a hand to her bared brown neck where she herself once wore a collar. “It’s a goal worth fighting for to me, my lord.”</p><p><em>House Forrester will have to wait a little longer to be saved. </em>Stones collected in Malcolm’s stomach at the realisation. Daenerys was unmistakably serious about her abolition, but stabilising Ghiscar thereafter would delay her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, possibly for years. He had scolded Asher so often on their journey, to think of family above all else and not make his uncle’s mistakes. Yet here Malcolm Branfield was, half a world away from Ironrath and oathbound to someone else’s war, like the knight-errant he always played at being as a boy. But this was no game.</p><p><em>Daenerys gave us much in gold</em>, he reminded himself. Surely enough to keep Talia and Ryon safe while they waited for him. And a delayed invasion would give Mira plenty of time to discreetly cut ties and leave King’s Landing; Elissa would not object to trading Tyrell friendship for a Targaryen alliance. <em>Highgarden never came when we needed them most.</em></p><p>Swallowing his misgivings, he took a knee. “Tell me what part you would have me play, Your Grace.”</p><p>The queen beamed. Taking up a scroll of parchment, she laid it out across the table to reveal a map of the known world. With a pale finger she drew a line from the Ghiscar region westward towards the nine Free Cities, the daughters of the Valyrian Freehold. “Meereen can stand against Yunkai and New Ghis. No other city in Slaver’s Bay approaches her power. But five of the Free Cities are major slave markets in their own right. Volantis especially. If they were to join the war…”</p><p>“Our side starts looking a good deal weaker,” finished Ser Barristan.</p><p>“Which is why it is crucial that we seek allies.” Daenerys indicated Lhazar on the map just east of Ghiscar. “The Lhazareen abhor slavery, too – they were a start. But Braavos follows the same policy. I am not educated, my lord, but I know that city was founded by escaped slaves from the Freehold, and that heritage has never been forgotten.”</p><p>“You mean to win the Sealord of Braavos.” It would certainly be a formidable alliance. Braavos was richer than any of her fellow Free Cities, with a fleet that dominated the Narrow Sea. Valyria’s bastard daughter was also the only one who could challenge her eldest; Volantis was a close second in wealth and power, and the Free City most like to meet Daenerys’s abolition with hostility.</p><p>The queen went to him and took his hands. “This is an important task, Malcolm, and secret. It is why I had us meet here rather than the war room – I trusted only Ser Barristan and Missandei with hearing this. I do not want it reaching the Sons of the Harpy that we failed in this venture, if we do. But I have faith in your success. You are a diplomat, a linguist, a scholar, but a military man, as well. The perfect envoy. Can you bring me my Titan?”</p><p>In answer, Malcolm drew Scythe and laid it at her feet. The smoky black Valyrian steel rippled with power in the burning sun as he repeated the oath. Daenerys picked it up and laid the blade’s tip across both his shoulders, reciting the old, honoured charges to him in turn.</p><p>“Arise, Ser Malcolm, knight of House Targaryen and of the Queensguard,” she finished softly. “Return to me with the Sealord’s wrath.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Mira II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for ongoing physical abuse, vomiting, decapitation, and discussion of past miscarriages.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>However great the collective arsenal of perfumes, nothing could erase the stench of rotted lord.</p><p>Tywin Lannister, Hand and grandfather to King Tommen Baratheon, Lord of Casterly Rock, Shield of Lannisport, and Warden of the West had been killed by a crossbow bolt to his bowels whilst squatting on the privy. If Cersei had tried to curb the flurry of gossip about her father’s death, her efforts were utterly dashed by his funeral today. The throat-catching stink of Tywin’s corpse told all.</p><p>So long it was since Morgryn last allowed her out with him, the explosion of smells and sounds would have dizzied Mira anyway. The heady slew of the funeral was overpowering. Gold cloaks marching through the cold slobber of rain, the drum of their feet pounding relentlessly. It was worse once they stepped inside the Great Sept of Baelor. Every septon was armed with a censer, each throwing a sickly-sweet punch of incense as they swung. But nothing masked the odour of Tywin’s shit in the trapped air. Shit that was decisively not gold.</p><p>She had to accept Morgryn’s hold to avoid doubling over. Like everyone else, they were garbed in mourning black, though her betrothed had ensured they were wearing silk as fine as any present nobleman. The sleek material gave easily under his digging fingers on her waist. They were uncalloused, for he had never worked a day of labour nor held a sword, but still he made the touch rough and hard. The bruises already there smarted fiercely. Pressed amid this throng of people, she could not flinch away.</p><p>Yet for all that, it felt good to stand here, knowing that Tywin’s death was the reason.</p><p>The septons clouded around the bier to make their prayers. May the Father be just as he looked on the Lord Hand’s sins. <em>The justice was Tyrion’s crossbow.</em> Tywin had made her House’s slaughter possible by raising Roose Bolton as Warden of the North. Her mother, all her brothers save Ryon, countless more besides. Their blood was on his hands.</p><p>It was hard to imagine, that Tyrion hated his father half as much as she did, to make himself a kinslayer anew after Joffrey.</p><p>“You did not see the Imp at his trial, sweetling,” Morgryn had explained. “He went mad with rage. Cursed everyone in the city. Said his father had been trialling him all his life for his deformity alone, that he took relief from watching his nephew die in agony.”</p><p><em>Tyrion</em><em> was a stranger, yet he tried to help me.</em> “Had you allowed it I could have been there.”</p><p>“To do what? Defend him? I spared you, Mira. You’d have been forced to watch as he spat on every ally he ever had for condemning him when he needed them. You must have promised something to get where you did with him – you might well have been the first to know his rage.”</p><p>“I would never use him that way!”</p><p>The moment the words left her mouth, she remembered her plan. The decree she had hidden, how she meant to use it to save herself. <em>Gods, how can I say that?</em></p><p>That night, she gathered the torn pages of her Longstrider, some already covered in her practised mimicking of Tyrion’s distinct, flowing cursive. Writing more on a fresh one only made her hand shake in protest. She balled it into a fist and punched down. That drenched the page in spilled ink, black swallowing beige parchment.</p><p>It had to go to the fire.</p><p>She had not tried copying Tyrion’s writing since. If she was only going to ruin good paper – <em>Rodrik’s book spoiled for nothing – </em>there was no point. She had even plied Arton into showing her his whittling, smiling and pretending she did not know the craft herself… then stealing the knife when his back was turned. To replace the one she lost, use against Morgryn if it came to that, but she did it with a mind to carve a forged seal.</p><p>Still. Tywin’s funerals offered new opportunity. The whole Keep was attending, Margaery included. Margaery who knew what the prospect of marrying a monster was, who had stoutly refused to see Elaena wed against her will. <em>Whatever she thinks of me, she will not let me suffer Morgryn. I can get out of this without need of a forged letter.</em></p><p>Her betrothed, though, had pre-empted her motives.</p><p>“No. We're not going. I know you bear no grief for Tywin Lannister of all people. You want to beg help from one of your old friends. That scheme will bear no fruit. You are Lady Margaery’s handmaiden in name only now. When we leave for Ironrath, you won’t even be that.”</p><p>“You ought to tell her of our departure.”</p><p>“Thereby ensuring that she will ask about you? Again, no. The queen-to-be can seek you out herself if she pleases – and we both know she won’t, not unprompted. The problems of associating with you…”</p><p>“I was cleared of Damien’s murder. The Red Keep’s gossipers have just been given much better fodder than the men I’ve allegedly fucked and murdered. My reputation is no longer a concern.”</p><p>“Obviously. I need my wife respectable for the sake of my own connections. But as far as Margaery knows, you grieve for your family so deeply, you can barely bring yourself to leave your chambers. Yet how many attempts to see you have I needed to deflect?”</p><p>“For all I know…”</p><p>“Oh, now, you're too clever for that. You <em>do</em> know. I’ve no power to deny the future queen a thing. The reason you have not seen her is that she has not thought to ask.”</p><p>Mira kept her face an ironwood mask so that he would not see how deeply those words struck.</p><p>“I'm sorry, sweetling.” He shrugged helplessly, the brown-furred maggots of his brows crooking. That hell-lined smile again. “Save giving you a slim chance to meddle, there’s no reason to approach the Tyrells.”</p><p><em>Your swordplay is too obvious, </em>she recalled Rodrik telling Asher when they were boys training, Asher falling on his arse at first and needing Rodrik’s help up. <em>Watch your opponent and exploit his attacks.</em></p><p>“I agree,” Mira said. “It is a slim chance. It would only be slimmer at Lord Tywin’s funeral, just after my house fell by the Boltons’ leave, considering he named Roose Warden of the North. Talking with me at such an event could look ill on anyone.”</p><p>Morgryn’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, so why…”</p><p>“It will be worse yet for those linked to me after I fail to put in an appearance. Whatever will that say of their sympathies?” She smiled sweetly. “And,<em> oh</em>, you have connections to think of.”</p><p>His mask fell to reveal a glower so savage it could have screamed. She saw his hands clench and scrambled backward. Instinctively terrified.</p><p>But before falling back another step, Mira Forrester caught herself and met him square in the eye.</p><p>“We will attend only the evening service open to all,” came Morgryn’s verdict. “Enough people who matter will be there to note our attendance, even if we miss the morning one, which is open only to the highborn and their retainers, anyway. You are no longer either now that you belong to me.”</p><p>“No more than you, my lor – forgive me – betrothed.”</p><p>“Foul-tongued whore. You should be more grateful that I gave you your life. Besides, titles mean little and less next to real power and wealth. Take a lesson from your family. Who would bow to the name of Forrester now? Then there’s me, no more highborn than Lord Baelish, and <em>yet</em>.”</p><p>“So, you think you can face Ludd with what you have now?” <em>Does that include sellswords?</em></p><p>His hand closed around her jaw, prickle-hot. “The details are nothing you need concern yourself with, sweetling.”</p><p>The memory of his chokehold made her flinch, back in the present. The silent sisters’ tall candles wavered briefly along with her vision. Their flame nearly died. It was growing darker.</p><p>Evening painted the Great Sept’s marble walls in greys and dulled gold, light draining from the faces of the gods in their stained-glass windows. The Maiden’s cheeks were sallow and sunken, shadows lined the Father’s grimace and pooled in the hollows of the Mother’s eyes. Mira stared at the goddess’s face until it morphed into the sharp, grime-etched features of the woman she met in the Black Cells. <em>She had a baby son herself, and she believed in the Seven. </em>That was all Mira would ever know of her.</p><p>Cersei reached for her own son’s shoulder. As the septons finished, all attendees fell to a kneel on the worn stone floor as the king and queen regent rose.</p><p>With the service proper over, the crowd shuffled into the Hall of Lamps. Each rainbow-coloured glass globe hummed as it throbbed out light, until chatter eventually rekindled, drowning the sound out. Morgryn’s arm stayed snaked around her own, but he had to follow her lead as she walked them through the crowd. They had to tarry long enough to be seen. <em>This is my chance. </em></p><p>Keeping her head appropriately lowered, downcast, Mira searched for people she knew.</p><p>She spotted Garibald Tarwick. He turned away when she caught his gaze, but at least he hesitated before doing so. Not so decisively as he spurned Lyman at King Tommen’s coronation feast. Her reputation, while mending, was far from fully healed. Tarwick was a good gauge for that. He had been the one to warn her that nothing in King’s Landing went unnoticed.</p><p>Her heart sank. Repeatedly, she glimpsed Ser Loras or other Tyrell knights she knew, but they kept failing to catch her eye. Lyman was too deep in his own world to notice her. Truly, she had nobody –</p><p>“Mira? Is that you?”</p><p>Morgryn tensed up beside her.</p><p>“Taena.” The name fell from her like a gasping laugh. A prayer. “You weren’t at the morning service.”</p><p>“Oh, there as well,” she chuckled. “I wanted to see the queen – there was no approaching her with so many others clamouring before, but this service seems a better chance.”</p><p>“Margaery is here too? Or do you mean the queen regent?”</p><p>Taena’s dark eyes glittered, but her knowing smile did not falter. “Queen regent. You must forgive me; such nuances of the Common Tongue are difficult. We do not have these concepts in Myr. Even Margaery has to clarify which address is correct sometimes.”</p><p>“As do we all,” whispered Mira behind the back of her hand, making Taena relax and Morgryn twitch.<em> And now I know Margaery has been crowned, for all his affecting otherwise to cow me.</em></p><p>“My lady,” he broke in, “I have not had the pleasure.”</p><p>“Forgive me. May I present Lady Taena of House Merryweather, wife of Lord Orton. We served as handmaidens together. Taena, my betrothed, Lord Rickard Morgryn.”</p><p>“Yes – we did hear! Congratulations, Mira.” Taena folded her into an embrace, loose enough to keep respectful of Tywin but firm enough to be warm. Her thick black hair smelled of wildflowers and sunshine. Of Highgarden. “I wish it were happening at a happier time for you.”</p><p>It had been a long time since anyone touched her so gently.</p><p>Morgryn was not to be forgotten. “We all wish that it were so. My betrothed is suffering something that will stay with her forever. But life will go on…”</p><p>“You are quite right, Rickard,” cut in Mira. “It <em>will</em> go on, as I must, and I have been closed off for too long, don’t you think? I should not forget my friends in such times as these.”</p><p>His eyes flared, but Taena was looking away. “Ah, there she is!”</p><p>Swallowing a curse, Mira followed her gaze to Cersei and – her heart jumped – Margaery. The two queens' heads were bowed together, gold against chestnut. To those who did not know their enmity, they must have looked like women exchanging confidences. Mira was reminded of deer locking horns, as if they were the Baratheon stags and not King Tommen. <em>Fitting enough, in his case.</em></p><p>“My chance for Cersei,” grinned Taena. “I’ll get Margaery over. She’s wondered about you.”</p><p>Mira seized her hands. “Yne kaerīñās.” It was a phrase she remembered from how frequently it had appeared in the High Valyrian poetry Mother taught her as a girl. <em>Deliver me.</em></p><p>Taena paused. Their eyes met. Mira used hers to point to Morgryn and repeated the phrase.</p><p>Margaery withdrew from Cersei. Taena’s gaze flew to them like a moth pulled to fire. She slipped her hands from Mira’s with a bemused twitch of her head, a tightened smile, and rushed to secure her place for an audience.</p><p>Morgryn marched her to the doors. “My men will escort you back to the Keep now, <em>sweetling.</em>”</p><p>Just as Mira was herded into the carriage, a voice called for them to wait. The sight of Margaery approaching, hands clutching her skirts, eyes bright, curls dancing in the night breeze, was one of the loveliest Mira had seen in a long time. <em>The older sister I never had.</em> Margaery glanced back to check no one was watching before reaching through the carriage window; Mira’s hand rushed to meet hers and their fingers formed a tightly bound knot.</p><p>“I could not have seen you in <em>there</em> had you approached me, you understand,” she said breathlessly, “but Taena said you were feeling ready to be out and seeing people again. I was so pleased, even if you cannot be my handmaiden anymore.”</p><p> “Your Grace, that’s not…”</p><p>“I want to see you. Before I am wed, before you are. Somewhere quiet. I will make time for you. We can arrange something.”</p><p>“What else did Taena say?” asked Mira urgently.</p><p>“Mostly, she wanted to talk to Cersei, gods know why.” She grew serious. “That woman has gotten worse, Mira. She fancies herself as cunning as her father, but she has only ever matched him in cruelty. We cannot coax her back to Casterly Rock soon enough.” Her conspiratorial grin, one she used to flash at Joffrey, blossomed anew. “But we will.”</p><p><em>We.</em> It was the word Mira’s mind pivoted on, a collective that no longer included her. One that would never welcome her inside again. She thought of Margaery’s past refusals to help her family, all those empty platitudes, at war with the kindly face of the angel before her. <em>The reason you have not seen her is that she has not thought to ask – </em></p><p>“We will see each other soon,” she made herself say. She needed the escape still. “I promise.”</p><p>“I promise, too.” The queen consort squeezed their joined hands, then sprang away, hurrying, unable to get back to the Great Sept and the politics inside soon enough.</p>
<hr/><p>Whoever the carriage’s driver – Kyllan or Arton – he had reported her encounter with Margaery to Morgryn immediately.</p><p>The night was not yet over. The moon remained a fat ghostly blot in the sky, blue-black like the sheen of a raven’s plumage. Mira was at her tower window again, watching the moonlight lace the waves, when Morgryn burst in.</p><p>“Ink.” He set down a bottle with a thud. “Paper. Wax. Seal.” Those were placed beside it. “You are going to write a letter to Queen Margaery-”</p><p>“Not queen-to-be, then?”</p><p>He hit her across the breasts (never her face, anymore, lest the wound prove unconcealable). A blaze of pain. She hit the floor.</p><p>“-That you are very sorry, but you cannot meet with her. I’ll have Arton deliver it for you. Do not seal it, I’ll be reading it over before it leaves the room.”</p><p><em>My escape. </em>“No. I refuse.”</p><p>“That is what I thought you’d say. I can persuade you otherwise.”</p><p>“You need me for heirs. Visit too much violence on me and that will not be an option.”</p><p>“Why would I do that? You’ve made it clear that threats against your person are ineffective, carried out or no. Well and good. I’m trying something else.”</p><p>Ice shot down her spine. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“King’s Landing has so many orphaned children you practically step on them anywhere you walk, as you must know from your charity work with the Tyrells. And, among them, I found a few who looked rather like <em>him</em>.”</p><p>Grabbing her arm, he yanked her to her knees. Before she could struggle a box was shoved into her hands. “Open it.” He let a moment crawl by. “Open it before I do. You will like the contents even less if I have to thrust them in your face.”</p><p>With her shaking free hand, she pried open the box.</p><p>The head <em>did</em> resemble Tom’s, but his eyes were glazed and dull where there should have been life. She screamed. Morgryn shoved a cloth into her mouth. His breath scalded her ear as he leaned in.</p><p>“You will write that missive for Margaery, and refrain from trying to meet her again. Fail and another one of these boys will die. I gathered a fair-sized cluster of them, and I’ve no need of safeguarding <em>their </em>health. The next will suffer more than just a beheading, I promise.”</p><p>The world teetered like a horse’s jerked halt. She felt detached from her own body. When he removed the gag, she managed only a word.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“No?” he echoed. “You doubt me? Would you like to test that? Tell me how many more coal boys you’d like to kill and I’ll happily oblige.”</p><p>Mira was already straining away from him; when she vomited, he was mostly spared. It splattered instead over the floor, onto her skirts. Morgryn threw his eyes upward.</p><p>“I’ve made my point. I will not leave it with you all night.” He closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “Now… earlier, at the funeral, a friend asked me if you were pregnant. Your innumerate <em>fainting spells</em> must have sparked a rumour that you are, and the discovery of your mess come morning will only feed it. I am setting our wedding three days hence. You have literally forced my hand, I fear, sweetling. I will not suffer talk of bastards.”</p><p>“Three days,” she spluttered in a dumb echo.</p><p>“Between two and four,” he agreed. “There’s no need to remain here now that I know where to direct my forces. Ludd won his battle; the war itself will be mine.” His hand drifted across her cheek. “Learn docility, get with my heirs for true, and I might let you taste the spoils.”</p><p><em>I could kill him now. </em>Her fury turned as white-hot as her clenched knuckles on the cold stone floor, fierce as the breath storming in her throat and chest. Her knife was in reach. He would not see it before she buried it in his neck. With a beam of ecstatic terror, she realised that she could hack him into a bloody rag of nothing right now, he would never hurt anyone else again, the dungeon they would throw her in could only be better than the Black Cells, than <em>this fucking room, </em>execution for murder that was not treason would mean no harm to Talia or Ryon –</p><p> – Save that they would be alone, if she died. That thought, in the end, was what stayed Mira’s hand.</p><p>After Morgryn left, she crawled feebly over to the trunk holding her clothes. Slipped into a fresh nightgown. There was no chance of her sleeping tonight, but she needed to feel clean, as concerned what she wore if in no other sense. She tried attacking her mess with her washcloth and ruined it after a few strokes. The stink filled the room, attached itself to her as her anger grew hotter and fiercer. Burning off all lingering guilt about Tyrion.</p><p>Lannister helped her once, but he was not here now. No more than Margaery or anyone else.</p><p>
  <em>I will not give my life nor what security I can offer my living siblings to put you in the dirt, Morgryn. But I will butcher you. You’ll have the fate you gave Tom and this boy, and I’ll see the debt paid with interest.</em>
</p><p>She reached for the hidden decree, held it in her hand, and felt oddly lighter as she made her choice.</p>
<hr/><p>The first day she spent in her room. Morgryn put off collecting the missive for Margaery until the morrow. All the better to give time for rumours of her pregnancy to spread, supporting the excuse of sickness. “All the best lies are seasoned with truth,” he told Mira with a smile before leaving.</p><p>She was alone and free to work.</p><p>Carefully, she drew out Arton’s whittling knife and the wooden blocks Ethan sent her. It had been a while since she last carved anything, and the tiny, intricate bearing of the rampant Lannister lion on Tyrion’s seal was a tough undertaking. <em>I am a daughter of House Forrester still. I grew up with the wood. I can do this. I must.</em></p><p>It took the whole morning and more, and several failed attempts besides. By the time she was done, her fingers were humming with pain and glanced with blood. But she had her little carved lion.</p><p>After cleaning up, Mira decided on a test. She burned some of the wax Morgryn gave her – happily red, as Tyrion’s decree seal was; he had typically not preferred his House’s traditional golden wax – and stamped her creation down on one of the Longstrider’s used pages. Placed next to Tyrion’s decree, the two little lions were near impossible to tell apart.</p><p><em>Only a cat of a different coat,</em> she thought as she hid her new seal and the decree. The bloodied ironwood fed the hearth. Its fire cast a familiar blue glow, burning as warmly as a lover’s embrace.</p><p>Tyrion had said that his father took interest in ironwood after the loss of so many royal ships at the Battle of the Blackwater. <em>Up in green flame</em>. Mira did not actually know whether ironwood could survive wildfire, but it made no matter if Lord Tywin himself had been a willing buyer on that account. Strange that Cersei only showed the vaguest appreciation for the trade, if she wanted to emulate him so.<em> I can use that.</em></p><p>By morning of the second day, she had her apology for Margaery written up. Morgryn found no hidden messages in it after due scrutiny, and he withdrew, leaving her with Arton.</p><p>“It’s best to be careful with your health, milady, if you really are with child,” the guard told her, picking up the letter.</p><p>She regarded him and his earnest face, keeping her smile carefully afloat as she considered his words, whether there was a threat coiled within them. <em>Have you and Kyllan both taken coin from my betrothed to keep me here, knowing what he is?</em></p><p>Aloud, she said, “Believe me, I understand that well. My lady mother lost a few babes to stress herself. It happened after her family lost everything, just as mine has now.”</p><p>His eyes widened. “<em>Gods</em>. Forgive me, I had no idea… I am sorry.”</p><p>“As am I. She was of House Branfield, and great with child at the time of Robert’s Rebellion. After attending the Tourney of Harrenhal with Father, she carried on south to visit home, not knowing she was pregnant again. And so, when Robert came… she was <em>there</em>. She escaped back to Ironrath with her brother, but the babe was not so lucky.”</p><p>Arton was silent.</p><p>“He or she would have come right after me, had they lived. As it was, my mother did not have another successful pregnancy for years.”</p><p>That had been Ethan and Talia. Mira wondered, not for the first time, if all those losses had driven Mother’s dreams of having a girl who sang and played as beautifully as Talia could. As Mira was never able. Or, indeed, the fondness Mother always bore Gared. Gared who grew up with them at Ironrath, and was of an age with the first child Mother lost. <em>First of so many.</em></p><p>Wetness down her cheek made her realise she was weeping. She wiped her eyes and smiled at Arton. “Thank you, for listening to all that.”</p><p>“Thank you for sharing it, milady. Means a lot. To have that trust, I mean.”</p><p>“I am glad you appreciate that. For there is something else I must ask: I need you to arrange a meeting between myself and Lord Tarwick’s new wife, the Lady Sera.” <em>If he was at the funeral, they are still in the Keep.</em></p><p>“Lady Tarwick?! The…” He caught himself. “Forgive me, milady, it’s not my place.”</p><p>“Say what you will.” She let a worried crinkle form between her eyes.</p><p>“W-well, is it wise to be seen with such a woman? With her recent drinking problem…”</p><p><em>Oh, mercy.</em> “I did know,” Mira agreed gravely. “And… that is why I should like this meeting to be discreet. Somewhere in the royal gardens where we will not be disturbed. Will they be quiet today?”</p><p>“But for the hour of the lark. Moon Boy is performing a song then, I think.”</p><p>“Actually, that would be ideal. Please tell her to come meet me at the fountains just before then.” A fool’s performance would prevent them being overheard or much noticed. Then, frowning as if struck by a fresh thought, Mira added: “Oh, and so nobody hears it said that Lady Morgryn met with her, you’d best say someone else gave you the message.”</p><p>“<em>Ah</em> – I see, yes, milady. What should I tell her?”</p><p>
  <em>I was duped into meeting Damien by a promise of what I then wanted most: information on Tyrion.</em>
</p><p>“Just the truth: that it concerns Queen Margaery. I am officially her handmaiden still, but when Rickard and I leave for Ironrath, I will of course have to formally quit her service.”</p><p>Arton nodded. “Of course.”</p><p>“But she should not be left short an attendant, not with the wedding so close. As such, Lady Tarwick’s dismissal is being reconsidered.”</p><p>His brows lifted. “Even though she’s known as… well, a bit of a…”</p><p>“Yes. She is the only woman in the Keep trained and available at such short notice. Only, as I said, do not give my name.” <em>She would not come if she knew it was me.</em></p><p>“I see now. Yes, milady.” This time when he turned to go, he lingered of his own accord. “Milord hasn’t really been arranging things like this with the queen. His focus is all on Ironrath and the wolfswood.”</p><p>Mira gave him a long-suffering smile. “Can you truly blame him, Arton? Ludd Whitehill has made everything so incredibly difficult on that score. Even if Rickard were not so distracted with his own cares, I know that Queen Margaery must be. Imagine how much she must need to prepare! I should be impressed if my betrothed managed half a moment of her time.”</p><p>“There’s not many who care to spend theirs on those below them,” agreed Arton, a shy grin lighting his face. “You’re not like that though, milady.”</p><p>“Good service deserves recognition, Arton.” She widened her own smile. “Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”</p><p><em>A sharp one, </em>she thought after he left. Sharp enough to have caught gossip about Sera’s dismissal. He had known of Lyman too, at that. <em>Yet he apparently knows of no scandal involving me.</em> When her sneaking into Tommen’s coronation feast through Sera made its way even to Cersei’s ears.</p><p>She leaned back in her chair. Arton was either so loyal he willingly deafened himself to all slander against her specifically, or a brilliant performer but for that one slip-up. Another rat with a sweet face. He was witty, capable, warm, sweet – she liked him – but then Morgryn had only ever been cordial when the whole time he was plotting her destruction. Mira could not fall into that trap again.</p><p>
  <em>He and Kyllan must both be silenced for my alibi’s sake, anyway.</em>
</p><p>Outside, the sun was climbing high. The hour of the lark gave her more than enough time to write an accomplice into her letter. Mira had practiced Tyrion’s hand as often as she could; it came naturally now, and she had already thought out much of what to say. Gliding into her seat, she took up her quill and watched it fly across the paper.</p><p>
  <em>My dear Rickard,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>By the time this letter reaches you, I will have reached my destination safely, gods be good. The danger is ever-present, and I am reminded once again that my escape from the Black Cells would never have been possible without you. But have no fear regarding your reward. A Lannister always pays his debts, and you’ll find better interest with me than anything my sweet sister could offer. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>With your marriage to Mira Forrester underway, it will not be a long wait. The girl has played most well into our hands, has she not? Now that you have Ironrath through her, you have access to all ironwood logging sites owned by her House in the wolfswood. Use them well, and buy up any that you do not inherit. My time as master of coin has taught me of Forrester ironwood’s hitherto underappreciated value. My dear departed lord father saw it too, not that he ever troubled to explain it to Cersei. So much the better. She will never see it coming when I use it to take back the power she stole. </em>
  <em>Keep faith with me, remain one of my little birds in Westeros, and we’ll soon both have hands full of gold. In the meantime, put a little of your own to rewarding the escort you gave me. He was good company, and no less invaluable for my escaping safely.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Knock back an extra cup for me to the riches we shall soon share,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tyrion Lannister, rightful Lord of Casterly Rock.</em>
</p><p>She signed it, stamped it, sealed it. Mira broke the seal again as soon as the wax dried – <em>I’ll need Morgryn to have already read this – </em>and finally burned Tyrion’s decree.</p>
<hr/><p>Mira found Sera perched unsteadily on a marble bench hugged by a barricade of flowers, some ways off from Moon Boy and his growing crowd. This part of the gardens was washed in a gentle bath of sunlight, familiar enough that being outside again did not hurt this time. Mira’s ears and nose had only birdsong and the sweet sea breeze to adjust to. Sera always loved it here. This was the same spot they had sneaked off to for wine. She was nursing a cup now. Her warm brown eyes were reddened, dulled like a suffocating candle with just enough light to keep burning as they searched for her anonymous contact.</p><p>When those puffy eyes found Mira, the hope in them died.</p><p>“You,” she said, her voice quaking, bubbled venom. Even now, the poison of King’s Landing did not suit her. Something in Mira’s soul cracked like frost underfoot.</p><p>
  <em>Iron from Ice.</em>
</p><p>“Hello again, Sera.” Mira bid her face house a hopeful smile. “I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you. There was never a good time before. Oh, maybe there is no good time… but I truly have been desperate to see you.”</p><p>Sera rose to her feet stiffly and pursed her lips. “Too bad. I have nothing to say to you.”</p><p>“Oh, Sera, please! I am so, so sorry for what I did, I know it was wrong – gods, I do – and you must believe me when I say that I would give <em>anything</em>…”</p><p>“How in Seven Hells can I believe anything you say again?” She stalked closer. “You used me! You betrayed me! You looked Margaery in the eye and lied about me to cover yourself! Without my marriage, I’d have been left in the cold, my life ruined, and you <em>knew</em> it. There is no making up for that!” Her face grew taut with the effort of holding back tears. “You were my friend, and you shot me right in the heart.”</p><p><em>Iron from Ice. </em>“Then you were first to draw. What you told Margaery about me before I <em>ever</em> lied…”</p><p>“Was all true. I’m only sorry I never saw it sooner.”</p><p>“Oh, gods. Sera, I regret what I did so much! And I - I have fallen into some trouble. I cannot wait for Margaery’s wedding. Help has to come now. There is no one else I can turn to…”</p><p>“You are <em>unbelievable</em>. I knew you’d get yourself into some new mess sooner or later, but to have the gall to come crying to me!” Sera huffed out an empty laugh, humourless. “If you think I’d be stupid enough to be tricked into helping you again…”</p><p>Mira grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t understand! I am scared for my <em>marriage</em>, Sera. My husband… he’s a traitor.”</p><p>“Truly? The two of you are well-suited, then.”</p><p>“I found this from the Imp in his study!”</p><p>Her voice hitched on a wail as she all but shoved the letter into Sera’s hands. Tyrion’s name – rarely uttered since his escape – gave Sera enough pause that she did not immediately fling it back. Her eyes grew round as they read the words. “This is…”</p><p>“I know!” Mira wrung her hands. “Rickard approached me at such a difficult time. With my family’s plight, I was so grateful to have someone providing a comforting ear. But he was just using me for this alliance with the Imp.”</p><p>Sera blinked, comprehending. “That’s why Tyrion was always trying to talk privately with you.”</p><p>Frowning as she pretended to turn the new thought over, Mira agreed, “Yes. I think you must be right. With me as their raven unknowing, neither would invite suspicion talking to the other.” <em>That was my burden to bear with Margaery</em>, she left unsaid, letting Sera consider that herself.</p><p>“Mira… what are you even asking? My help hiding this?”</p><p>“Please, Sera. I’ll do anything.”</p><p>“Why protect a man who used you?”</p><p>“I am with child.” Her lip trembled as she stroked her stomach the way Mother had done whilst carrying Ryon. “You might have heard the rumours. Whatever happens, I do not want my baby to grow up without a father.”</p><p>“I heard. It’s true?” She sneered. “To think you always played the septa at Highgarden. Yet now you’re hitching up your skirts before marriage!”</p><p>“E…exactly. You <em>know</em> me. I would never have been so reckless under normal…” A sob cracked out of Mira. “Rickard was not the man I thought I knew, but…”</p><p>“Just as you’re not the woman I thought I knew. Now you know how it feels, being used by someone you trusted. You’ve gotten yours as he’ll soon get his. Goodbye, Mira.”</p><p>Sera started pushing past her. She would not do it without a fiercer shove.</p><p>
  <em>Iron from Ice, Iron from Ice, Iron from Ice. </em>
</p><p>“Sera,” hissed Mira, “if you show anyone that letter, if you make my child baseborn, I swear by all the Seven that I will shout your own bastardy from the castle walls. Margaery dismissed you. She said herself that you stealing Cersei’s wine is all over the Keep. You need all the protection you can bloody well get just now and there’ll be<em> none </em>if the truth about you comes out.”</p><p>Horror drained all colour from her face. “Garibald –”</p><p>“Is a powerful lord. You are a girl with no family, no name, and now, no friends in the Keep. If he cannot annul your marriage, he has subtler ways of ending it at no inconvenience to himself. He is a man who cares for his reputation, Sera. Staying married to you would cost him more than making you disappear. What was it he once said? <em>Drink too much once and you’re forever the drunken fool.</em> All the world knows such vices are worse in bastards.”</p><p>For all the pretence that court life demanded, the Seven had never been her gods in her heart, but only Mira needed to know that. She stared at the woman whom she had once called dear friend and willed her to see the flaw in her threat. For a moment the world wavered on a needle’s point.</p><p>Sera raised her chin. “You <em>bitch</em>. Go right ahead. Do that, and I’ll tell Cersei that you tried to stop me doing this. The brat in your belly won’t save you from charges of covering treason.”</p><p>Mira crumbled to her knees. “You cannot, please, you cannot do this to me…”</p><p>“I can.” Vengeance painted an ugly smirk on Sera’s worn, splotchy, beautiful face. “And I will.”</p><p>Her skirts lashed at Mira’s face as she marched off. There was fierce purpose in her every step, her hand gripping the letter like a snare closing on a beast’s neck.</p><p>
  <em>So flies my raven.</em>
</p><p>A breeze carried the honeyed sound of a lute’s last refrain, leaves whispering – then applause. Moon Boy’s song was at an end. Mira started walking back. Her jittery energy and relief were fading, the space it left in her reclaimed by a resolve that burned with such heat that it left her cold.</p>
<hr/><p>Their wedding next morning was a small ceremony, with the blanket excuse that the city still mourned, that the situation with Ironrath demanded haste on their part, that in the future a repeated ceremony might follow. Anyone offended by the lack of an invitation was thus placated. After the septon pronounced them man and wife, Morgryn stole her aside and asked, between branded kisses down her throat, about Sera.</p><p>“If you know I spoke with Lady Tarwick, you also know who she is,” replied Mira, swallowing an instinctual pulse of terrified revulsion. <em>Not long now. </em>“A woman dismissed quite firmly from Margaery’s service, because of me. I can ask nothing of her because she’d never do it. The Tyrells suspect no ill of you, Rickard.”</p><p>She was telling him nothing he did not already know. Arton would never, could never have arranged the meeting if Morgryn thought Sera dangerous. Her husband still pressed further, idly curious, the fat wet worms on his mouth slithering back up the slope of her jaw.</p><p>“Why meet with a woman who despises you if there was naught to gain, bride? You were not trying to save me a job compensating Margaery for love of me.”</p><p>“For want of a little kindness,” she rasped, “so that nobody else gets hurt. Least of all more children, which is all my little sister and baby brother are. Have mercy on them. Please. My lord.”</p><p>His smile was a drawn blade.</p><p>“You’ve seen sense at last. I should’ve known this melee of ours would only be decided at the altar.”</p><p>It was the last thing he ever said to her. The red cloaks came; the rest was a blur. Morgryn quailed and bucked and screamed uselessly in their arms. She was stripped of her bridal gown, shoved into a threadbare shift, and escorted to a place of temporary custody. The horrid grasping hands that dragged her – <em>get off, get off</em> – made dismay at her broken wedding easy to feign, but she thought only of where he was going. <em>See how well you like the Black Cells, Morgryn. </em></p><p>“And now the rains weep o’er his halls,” Mira told the ceiling of her latest prison cell that night.</p><p>She was without her nightshade. Mercifully, her sleep was too exhausted to provoke dreams.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Morgrekt</p><p>Just to clarify, Tommen is 15 in this, giving Cersei the regency for a year until he reaches the age of majority.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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